Andrew Moore's Blog, page 103

What to Do When Your Sequel Flops?

Those banks won't rob themselves.

Happy December

December facts:

1. This month is named after a dragon named Ecembe.
2. Snow.
3. Some think this is the tenth month of the year. They are correct.
4. The authorities use the lie of twelve months to create extra centuries of history filled with propaganda.
5. December is one of the best months for a murder mystery. June is good as well.
6. The weapon of December is the fusion beam.

When Should Timeskips Be Used?

Never.

On Space Elevators

Before we build one, we'd better decide what sort of uniform the elevator operators will have. I suggest purposefully fraying the elbows to give passengers something to think about during the trip.

Zero-Gravity Fashion

Your otherwise-transparent hamster ball, painted and decorated! Hats on your elbows and knees! Extravagant hooks used to clip yourself to the inner hull! Zero-gravity fashion! They're shaped like dolphins. Nothing's classier than dolphins. Does your space helmet have a space between two transparent plates that you can put water and fish in? It had better. Zero-gravity fashion!

The Christmas Endurance Challenge

Can you bear Christmas for more than a month? If not, you'd better learn how, because none of us get a choice.

Interregnum

The clouds before the sun proved the king was dead, and the keening in the city confirmed it. Who did not mourn? Even the river ceased in its course for an hour, unwilling to flow as the king's blood did.
The council chose a regent, who wore the mask and the cloak so no god would glance that way and think him a king. He arranged the effort. One crew set out to establish camps along the way while a second began the road to the chosen pyramid. Priests blessed every step of the route. The rich sacrificed and the poor prayed that the pyramid held an excellent king inside.
Pessimists instead called the people to think what would become of them when the pyramids were all demolished, plundered for their kings. Once there had been forty; now eight. Did the end of the kingdom wait after those eight generations?
Not so, said the new king. Soon they would learn to build pyramids again. A river might cease for an hour, but not longer.
Finis

Big Decisions

Suppose I'm going to grab stuff straight out of mythology. Do I change the names or not? Familiarity might increase interest, but maybe it will seem old and creaky like Star Wars. One option is to compromise by making their middle names the same, but having Benjamin Orpheus McFadden explain that his parents were a musician and a Greek language professor will not come off as being as clever as the writer would hope.

Holiday Prediction

Eight hundred years from now, historians will theorize Black Friday commemorated a plague or something like that.

Twisted Fantasy

What if your fantasy country has turkeys instead of chickens? Oh man, I'm losing my mind!