• On Life and Love

    DragonCon, Morning One

    No, I don’t think I’ll be posting an obnoxious sequence of posts on the minutiae of DragonCon. This my first visit, though, and I am sitting and waiting for my first panel, a Torchwood panel featuring John Barrowman and Kai Owen. In some places, my schedule is 4-5 events wide on my calendar, where I haven’t yet decided which to do. Oy. DragonCon!

  • On Life and Love

    “Planetfall” posted!

    A new Witches story this week! I present to you the very simply named “Planetfall“: “Shouldn’t we be moving, Miss Lucia?” Robert asked urgently. Lucia looked up at him, her pale blue eyes meeting his green ones. “We will go when we go,” she said coldly in a thick accent. Her dirt-smudged face was set. Robert flinched back slightly, smiled fixed. “O-kay…” Hardi glanced at Lucia to find Lucia waiting for her gaze. Hardi quirked an eyebrow and didn’t look away. Robert looked at both of them and cleared his throat nervously. Next week’s story will be a Transhuman Congress story, and I’d love feedback on what folks would like…

  • On Life and Love

    “Breached defenses” posted

    Back to Witches this week for “Breached defenses“: Hardi blinked. “I think I’m done here,” she muttered as she stood with her tray. “Have a good day, Dr. Yuk.” “Robert,” he said around another mouthful of food, “and it really helps if you soften the ‘u’. Make it just a bit more like ‘yook’ than ‘yuck’.” Hardi looked down at him. “Yuk,” she said, trying it out as he suggested. “Yup,” he said with a nod. “See, it’s much less interesting that way. You’ll be bored with ‘Yuk’ and onto ‘Robert’ soon.” He grinned impishly. This is part three of the Witches series.

  • On Life and Love

    “Surgical Strike” posted

    As promised last week, I have another Transhuman Congress story up, called “Surgical Strike“: Sirpa waved a hand at the monitor. “We are adaptable.” “I can see that…” Harold said slowly with narrowed eyes. “Can I have your name?” “Not yet,” Sirpa said, moving her lips in a facsimile of a smile. Harold didn’t smile with her/us. “We aren’t human, Harold, however much you want us to pretend to be. We have no ‘humanish mannerisms’ other than what we learned when we woke five months ago. This specific physicality is not tightly bound to our existence as your body is.” I went back to my “Lina” characters this week, complete…

  • On Life and Love

    “Reshaping the landscape” posted

    I wrote a piece of flash fiction last week called “Reshaping the Landscape” that I’ve published here at irrsinn.net tonight: “Flat landscapes for better visibility,” they claimed. “Safer all around,” they claimed. Bullshit. “It’s my landscape!” she shouted down behind her. “You can’t have it!” Writing this has spawned a whole set of ideas in this same ‘verse. A lot of the ideas concern what a “person” is, what essential rights people have, how subjugated people make their own culture and identity, etc. especially as pertains to artificial intelligence. I also want to use this to experiment with letting a universe emerge from a set of short/flash stories (as opposed…