The Dead WIP File

 

Ah, the cemetery of dead works. The gravestones list and limp far into the distance. Some mark the resting places of stray ideas that never had a chance to mature. Others memorialize stories and characters that almost made it. Some stones stand guard over the ones that never stood a chance. 

Occasionally, in keeping with the philosophy that nothing is ever wasted, I take my shovel into the damp night and rob a grave. Metaphorically, of course, because really, it's just a question of searching some computer files. The thing is, I almost never resurrect a corpse, dress it up, and then teach it to sing 'Putting on the Ritz'. Instead, I slice the heart, guts, or brain out of the poor dead thing and transplant the organ(s) into whichever patient is on my table at the time. 

Situations. Snippets of dialogue. Whatever suits the more viable subject being stitched together. Mad scientists and evil geniuses should only ever plagiarize themselves, in my view. And then, only once. One heart cannot be sliced in half and shared between two patients if you expect either to live. 

Thining back across the stories in my files, the only time I resurrected the dead, the story was only mostly dead. With a little magic called 'a competent editor', that story didn't just walk, it grew wings. Maybe it is all dressed up and singing 'Putting on the Ritz'. 

From the Dead Letter File

As I am on limited computer time while recovering from a concussion, I'll just give you more story excerpt to read and spare you the commentary.

This is from what had been intended to be a half steampunk, half fantasy that no one wanted.

“Madam?”

            Voice. Male. Speaking one of the millions of tongues encoded on the language chip implanted in her brain, which, judging from the excruciating throb at her temples, was about to explode.

            “Madam,” the voice sounded impatient and what? Unsettled? “I must insist you shake off Anubis’s hold and wake. This instant. Can you hear me? Can you tell me your name?”

            What was her name this time? She wouldn’t have been sent in without cover. With a sickening lurch, her mind stumbled into habit and she mentally tripped the program interface that should provide an entire lifetime’s worth of names, dates, and places, memories of people, events and things she’d never actually known.

            Nothing happened. She forced her eyes open but saw only darkness. Fear caught in her throat. Uncertain how to proceed, she gave him the only name rolling around the splitting pain in her head. “Dainan.” It came out a bare thread of sound.

            Smell hit her. Dank, musty soil that hadn’t been sweetened by any touch of sun and which supported no living thing. An acrid, metallic scent bit the back of her throat. She flinched. Did blood always have to smell like that? Whose was it? Above the background odors, a warm hint of pine combined with exotic spice tempted her to turn and burrow into the scent.

            “Dainan?” he repeated, jolting her out of reverie. “Is that your first or last name?”

“Loewe!” another male voice, raspy as a behlour cloud-cat tongue, shouted.

“Never mind,” the man beside her said. “Peter Loewe, at your service. What happened here?”

Too many questions. No answers. “Where?” she whispered.

“Where?” He laughed. It sounded forced. “We are short a meter from where that maniac murdered his last victim. Were you attacked? You don’t seem . . .that is to say, did you witness anything? Or were you, perhaps, a friend of the victim?”

“Attacked?” She nodded. Yes. That felt right, somehow. Attacked. Why?

“I – I apologize,” she murmured, automatically struggling to match his speech patterns, to fit in. “My memory is hazy.”

“Loewe,” rasp-voice growled. “Ma’at’s priestess and the police commissioner may be impressed by your magic tricks, but all I see is someone holding up my investigation. Leave the strumpet. She’ll sleep it off.”

Strumpet? Dainan frowned. What backward culture had Aeone sent her to this time? On what mission? And why did she not have cover memories?

“On the contrary, Inspector Cooper,” Loewe replied, the barest current of anger under his level tone, “I believe you have a witness on your hands.  The lady claims to have been attacked.”

“Attacked? What happened?” the inspector demanded of her.

She turned automatically toward the man addressing her. He reeked of stale smoke and moldering onions. The jagged ache in her head sharpened and she gasped.

“She is still dazed, Inspector, possibly injured, though the only outward sign I see is a scorch mark on her clothing there at the pocket.”

Scorch mark? Dainan frowned and cursed the fact that she still couldn’t coax her eyes to function to spec. Or at all. She shivered as anxiety spiked through her middle. She couldn’t do a proper damage assessment, much less attempt to initiate any kind of field repair. Not here. Not with witnesses.

“Injured,” the inspector huffed. “An addict, like as not. Won’t get a single useful fact out of her. Bundle her off, then. Just be sure to get an address so we can collect a statement later. Least you can do to be useful.”

The inspector stomped away, muttering.

Dainan sucked an angry breath between her teeth.

“That’s all very well,” Loewe said, his voice tight.

“No, it isn’t,” Dainan grumbled. “I do not like bullies.”

“You do not like - ” he broke off, drew a slow, audible breath and said, “I will endeavor to remember that. Allow me to have you escorted home and a doctor called. We may have questions once you are feeling more yourself. Where do you live?”

            Dainan closed her eyes and swallowed a sudden surge of nausea. “The River.”

           “The River.” He swore. “I have been educated in several of the finest universities the Empire of the Pyramids has to offer. I’ll be damned if I go on parroting a streetwalker like a schoolboy.”

“River Walker,” she corrected automatically.

“River – No. I’ll not do it again,” he cleared his throat. “Madam, where is your home?”

            “The River is my home,” she muttered, annoyance at his lack of comprehension speeding her heart rate. What was so difficult about understanding she didn’t belong in his world? Wait. Wasn’t there a rule against divulging her extra-planar origin? Had she just broken in? “My place of . . . birth doesn’t matter.”

            “Madam . . .”

            “My name is Dainan,” she said. Her voice sounded stronger. The hurt in her skull had subsided, but she still couldn’t feel her body. She cracked one eye open again and swore in her own, long dead, language.

            “I beg your pardon?”

            “I can’t see,” she said. “Your hypothesis regarding an attack is accurate. I’ve sustained damage. More to the point, however, I will be pursued.”

            “By whom? And why?” From the sharpening of his tone, she gathered that her companion had settled into his own investigation.

            “I don’t know,” Dainan hedged, confused by the flood of images that spilled through her head, none of which made any sense.

            He swore again.

            Dainan heard the rustle of fabric and the creak of leather as he shifted closer.

He dropped his voice so she had to strain to understand him. “You’re a tech or an inventor. Aren’t you? You said ‘your hypothesis’ and you aren’t touching anything.”

 

The Dream List

Y'all, I just turned in The Book I Thought I'd Never Finish. Does that one count? No? Okay. Projects I want to work on:

1. For a decade I wanted to finish the arc of the SFR series I started in 2010. Now, thanks to The Wild Rose Press, I get to do that. We'll see whether it was worth the wait. At this point, there are only two books left to write - one for Colonel Kirthin Turrel and one for Her Majesty Queen Eilod Saoyrse. That's about all I can say about those books at this point.
2.  There are a couple of hot novellas that happen in the same story universe as the SFR novels. I have two of those stories at least half done. Now I want them finished. The sexy shorts are a lot of fun. I find them to be great palate cleansers after the bigger novels. But these guys don't have a contract. The novels do. So these two take a number and stand in line.
3. There's a little piece of weird sitting on my hard drive called The Curse of the Lorelei - It's spy versus spy during an oddly haunted Civil War. It's meant to be a slow burn romance that takes a couple of books to pay off. I have the first book done, but it needs a little finessing before it sees the light of day. But. Contract for other books, right? Again. This book takes a number and stands in line.

All of this is predicated on the notion that I never again have an idea that grabs me by the throat and threatens me into writing it.