Niall Teasdale's Blog, page 27

No Escape from Fox

Fox Meridian is back in Inescapable. Can she cope with a new job and a rather unusual serial killer?

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Inescapable – Cover Art

You saw it here first… Well, okay, so I saw it first, because I made it, but you saw it here second.

And you can find out what Fox is doing in a mall that looks like it’s been through a zombie plague real soon now.

The Vampire

So, I said that I’d been writing a vampire story recently. For Halloween… my vampire:

Okay, so you can’t see much of her in the candlelight. Ahem. And no fangs, but she has got them and she is a vampire. And there’s no sparkling, except for eyes.

Pick Up the Phone and Call

A just for fun Kit-o-gram. This is nothing to do with the upcoming book. I just saw this outfit and it screamed Kit.

Tomorrow: Halloween pictures.

Update and NaNoWriMo

An update on what’s going on.

First, I plan to release Inescapable, the second Fox Meridian book on November 2nd. If anything happens to change that, I’ll let you know, but it should be done and dusted by then.

The 4th Fox Meridian book is partially complete, but I took a break to write something else which has been trying to get written for about four years. Hunter’s Kiss is my take on the modern vampire construct, set in New York, and I finally seem to have cracked it. I am not entirely sure when this will make it out as a book since I have enough material stockpiled or planned to keep it going for a while and it’s vampires so it’ll vanish into the pit of Twilight even if it’s nothing like.

It’s coming up to November and that’s NaNoWriMo month. I keep not planning to do it, every year since I did For Whom the Wedding Bells Toll, and then I do it, and I suspect this year will be no exception, but I’m going to take a break from normal again and write something more or less for the jollies. A new fantasy character emerged from my fevered brain recently and has just taken form, so I’m going to see where she takes me with as little planning as possible.

In December I’m hoping to start work on the next Thaumatology book. It’s still hazy, I may have to hold off, in which case I’ll wrap Fox Meridian 4 and see where I’m at.

And then it’ll be the new year and who knows what will happen in 2016. We could be invaded by aliens. Hopefully tall, attractive, female ones who want us to teach them about “this thing you call kissing.” No, I don’t think my luck’s that good.

Jackson and Terri

Jackson and Teresa Martins, father and daughter, and Fox’s friends.

Jackson is modelling the current fashion for the gentleman businessman, an Edwardian-style, high-collared suit with waistcoat and mock-watch fob. Not his usual style, but sometimes you have to fit in at meetings, do the corporate thing, you know? Born in 2006, Jackson was 24 when he founded MarTech Technologies in 2030 and he has been the backbone of its development into the huge conglomerate it is in 2060. He still has a majority shareholding.

The greatest event in his life was the birth of his daughter, Teresa in 2038, and the worst was the death of his wife, Lysandra in 2048. Teresa became the brightest spark in his life and he had some trouble letting her go when she grew up and started taking an interest in the business. He still gets depressed when they have to be apart, and she still lives in her own wing of the huge suite of rooms they share in the MarTech New York arcology.

Teresa, Terri to her friends, takes after her mother, much to Jackson’s relief. She has her mother’s aptitude for psychology, but chose to use it differently. Terri claims her father’s brains got in there too so her career in artificial intelligence seemed to come naturally and Jackson believes she will surpass him in that area of expertise soon enough. Terri scoffs at the suggestion.

Kit

I’m not sure about that expression Kit’s wearing. Maybe she’s put pepper in Fox’s coffee or something. Not that she would ever do something like that, of course.

So, Kit is a late beta iteration of the MarTech Kitsune-592 personal assistant AI and she is unique. Teresa Martins had her avatar specifically designed, primarily to wind Fox up. The later versions are essentially the same, but a little different, and less cute. Aside from her clearly obvious talents, including the ability to look totally innocent while spiking coffee, Kit is programmed to act as a very effective secretary and is learning to be a detective. She can also create functional copies of herself to operate simultaneously on different processors. She’s limited to three running copies by the way her code handles synchronisation, but it’s a very useful talent and she makes good use of it.

Of course, what we perceive of Kit is just an avatar. She’s an image projected onto a screen or into the visual cortex of someone with a VR implant. With a VR implant you can also touch her, but the experience is limited since there’s no solid object there to touch.

As an aside, here we see Fox in more casual attire and, of course, with coffee in hand. Cops run on coffee and donuts after all.

Hunt the Fox

As has been spotted, Fox Hunt is out.

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Hope you enjoy it.

The Fox Meridian Lexicon

So, Fox Hunt is out tomorrow and I thought I’d give you all a hint of things which might appear in Fox’s world. Now, this is a direct paste of the lexicon I compiled for my use, and for Kate, my proofreader, and it currently spans three completed books, so don’t expect to see all of it in the first.

Now, if you read on a Kindle, you may get a bonus since I think X-Ray pulls information out of Shelfari and I’ll try to get as much as possible of this into the glossary listing there. Of course, that’ll take time, so all you folks who devour my books two minutes after they go on sale might have to check back after that first read or, date I say, read the book a second time. I know, a terrible hardship. That’s why you get to do the manual lookup here if you like.

AI: Artificial intelligence (except in agricultural circles; look it up). AIs are grouped into ‘classes’ based around how closely they mirror humans in sentience and processing power. Class 1s are dumb, barely aware, never learn, and don’t have emotions. Class 4s are largely indistinguishable from a human. All AIs are infomorphs.
Android: A humanoid cyberframe. Often a male bodyform, but the term is used more generically for male and female shells.
Arcology (arcologies): A self-contained, largely self-sufficient, ‘hyperstructure’ designed to allow people to live in it without ever leaving the building if they wish. These structures are enormous, some exceeding a kilometre in height.
Arigeep: A genetically modified sheep breed used in America. Compounded from arid, goat, sheep.
Bindwire: Genericised trademark name for a kind of plastic fibre a little like high-tensile silly string. Used in crowd control and prisoner capture, the material forms thin, very strong fibres which stick to a subject, tangling their limbs and fixing them to the spot.
Bioroid: A ‘biological android.’ Currently (2060) little more than a concept. These are artificially created life forms which can be manufactured, but require normal growth processes. (Wet nanofabs will fix this.)
Blip: Short video advert designed for insertion into IB channel multicasts.
CRS: Cyber-Rejection Syndrome. A collection of conditions which either preclude the use of cybernetics or tend to make them malfunction over time.
Cyberframe: Some form of robot body which can be operated by remote or by an AI.
Dopy (dopies): One who is high on drugs, alcohol, virtual mood enhancement, or just life.
Droid: Shortened from android, but typically used when the gender-form of the frame is unknown or unspecified.
Emergent AI: A lower class AI which develops to AI-4 on its own. No one knows how this happens, or whether it has actually ever occurred in real life.
Force de Police Républicaine (FPR): Canadian national police force, replaced the RCMP in 2032.
Frame: Shortened form of cyberframe.
Gynoid: Specifically a female bodyform android. Some consider the term crass, others consider it more accurate and correct than using android. (When wishing to ensure no offence is given ‘cyberframe,’ ‘frame,’ or ‘droid’ is always correct.)
Hyperstructure: A very, very large building.
Infomorph (infomorphs): An entity which exists as data. Probably an AI of some sort. (I didn’t make this one up!)
JITC: Just-In-Time Compiler. A mechanism for allowing code to run on multiple machine architectures. (I didn’t make this one up either.)
Lensman (lensmen): UNTPP operatives. Derives from the first book of E.E. ‘Doc’ Smith’s Lensman series, Triplanetary, which someone thought was just like ‘Trans-planetary,’ and also the perceived gung-ho attitude of UNTPP cops.
LifeWear: Wearable computing technology (a small headset) designed by the LifeWeb people and sold as designer tech (rather like the iPhone today).
LifeWeb: Replaced Facebook as the number one social site due to a focus on sociometry, the control and visibility of the links between associates.
LWOS: The LifeWear Operating System, a VA designed to interoperate with LifeWeb, running on LifeWear hardware. Pronounced ‘L-was.’ Attempts to get it pronounced like ‘low-os’ never caught on.
NAPA: North American Police Administration. In a similar manner to NIX, NAPA was formed to reduce administrative overheads and improve efficiency, collecting together metropolitan and federal police agencies, and judicial enforcement under a single banner. Unlike NIX, NAPA has a fairly reasonable reputation: certainly no worse than the old cops.
Napper: Derogatory term for police in America. From NAPA, obviously, but also aimed at suggesting most of them are asleep on the job. Believed to come from the common conception that, since patrols are performed by cyberframes, the rest of the cops spend most of their time in bed.
NIX: National Intelligence eXecutive. America’s national intelligence agency, formed from all the civil and military intelligence agencies in what was described as a cost-cutting exercise. Generally considered as a Big Brother organisation.
Nomad AI: A (currently theoretical) AI which exists on the internet and has nowhere to call home. They hack into computers powerful enough to host them, taking over operations or hiding on unused processors.
PA: Short for personal assistant. Where this is an AI rather than a human, a PA is generally a class 4. PAs are likely to run on a server and interact with their owner via telepresence since (as of 2060) few implants are capable of executing a class 4 AI. See also VA.
Painaway: Proprietary painkiller about equivalent to aspirin, but without the side effects.
Pearl, the: The pearl is the best, the ultimate, the greatest ever. From sup-PERL-ative.
Plazkin: Technically a trademark, but now so standardised that it’s become a generic word. A thin, polythene-like plastic material with elastic qualities. Used in a lot of clothing. A common component in 3D printed clothing and easy to recycle for reuse.
Q-bug: Basically an electric quad-bike, commonly used for transport in agricultural regions and on Mars.
Robot: A robot, obviously, but now used more specifically for devices which have their operating software built in (firmware) rather than cyberframes which can have operating software downloaded. The more generic meaning of a self-motivated device does still apply: robot is used where the precise nature of a device is unknown.
Slideway: A moving sidewalk, generally elevated, generally running from a station to an arcology or apartment block, or between associated apartment blocks.
SOS: Acronym for Smart Operating System, an AI (usually class 2) which is used to operate a computer through vocal/gesture/neural command.
Sprawl (usually has a capital ‘S’): The litter of temporary and semi-temporary dwellings which fill the spaces between the arcologies, apartment blocks, and other permanent structures. Some Sprawl is actually old buildings still in place, but those occupying them are technically squatters and could be kicked out if someone wanted the land. Others live in tents, old cars, lean-tos, and whatever else they can find shelter under.
Sprawler (sprawlers; not usually capitalised): One who lives in the Sprawl.
UNTPP: United Nations Trans-Planetary Police. Effectively Interpol with teeth. Responsible for international and interplanetary policing, and liaison between national and private forces.
US: Mostly used in speech as a shorthand for America. It no longer really means “United States” since there are no states, officially.
V-tag: A device which emits a signal detected by local receivers and interpreted by a neural implant or wearable interface to augment a user’s virtual environment (viron).
VA: Short for Virtual Assistant.
Viron: Virtual environment. The environment created through the use of an implanted computer/neural interface system and its interaction with v-tags.
Virtual Assistant: An AI program (generally class 2 or 3) which provides basic augmented reality functions (memory enhancement, facial recognition) and secretarial functions.
Wet Nanofab: A fabrication system which performs bottom-up object construction starting from a molecular source. It requires carefully controlled conditions to operate and is done in a ‘soup’ of nanomachines and source material, hence the ‘wet’ part.

Characters Development For Weirdos

Well, I am a bit weird, some say a lot. Developing a character for me is a process which can go on for a while and I thought I’d share. As an example, I’ll be using the heroine of my new series, Fox Meridian, partially because it’s publicity, and partially because she’s had a more complex development than some.

Okay, so generally I have a concept first. The concept comes from something I’ve watched on television, something I’ve read, and quite frequently from some random thought passing through my brain. This has been stewing in my head for several hours, usually more like a day or two. If an idea can’t hold onto my attention for a day, how is it going to hold yours. If I wake up and the concept’s gone, it doesn’t get written down. That’s if this is a primary character, of course. If they’re a secondary or an antagonist their concept will likely flow out of the plot for the story: I need our protagonist’s best friend, the leader of a militant terrorist group, whatever. Fox’s concept is “tough cop with a history, living in the near future.”

By now I’ve got a OneNote notebook set up for the project. I use a couple of tools for managing all the notes and such I keep on book projects. The main one for randomised notes is OneNote (which Microsoft made available for free), but I used to use Evernote with reasonable success. I prefer OneNote’s organisation. Recently I started putting some things into Trello, which is a sort of online project management tool: primarily lists, ideas for future stories, and To Dos go in there. About now I create a OneNote page and I write down my character’s name, maybe who their parents were, and a bit of description. The latter is going to be a rough outline of the character, where they came from, where they are now. I quite often end up changing the details in this as the demands on the character shift. (In Ugly this got changed because I got two characters a little twisted and confused their parents. Always read your notes, people!)

Usually, about now I’m off to my heaving great big graphics computer. I need to know who this person is and a picture is a thousand words, and that. So, I pull up DAZ Studio and start hunting through the pre-formed characters I’ve bought. What I’m looking for as the write shape and skin tone. I rarely use a pre-made model as is for any of my characters, never mind the main ones. Sadly I can’t use ZBrush worth a damn (or draw which would be even better) so I can’t uniquely sculpt a character, but I can sit there and tweak cheekbones, the corners of eyes, the wrinkles on brows. I can take the shape of one character and wrap them in the skin of another, change the eyes, select and colour the hair. Hair really changes the shape of a face and it says something about this person. When I think I have it right I do test renders: like many a WYSIWYG editor, Studio doesn’t quite show you what you get so it’s a good idea to look at the finished result.

This is one of the earliest renders of Fox. At this point she’s a Genesis 2 Female model. Case in point here about the importance of visuals to me: Fox was not Fox until I saw this. I can’t remember what I was calling her. Her name is actually Tara Meridian and maybe that’s all I had, but then I saw that hair and I thought “some kid at school said she had a fox on her head, she split the kid’s lip, but the name stuck, and now she likes it.” So, yes, that’s why she’s called Fox. To date no one has called her Foxy, and if they do we can expect another split lip. (I am going to be accused of making an obvious “attractive woman” reference with this one, but the hair is genuinely how she got the name, both fictionally and in reality.)

Probably while the first render is cooking, I’ll start designing the character. For me “designing the character” has a rather more specific meaning than for some, I think. Out come my PDFs and I start building the character in GURPS. GURPS, Generic Universal Role-Play System, is a pen-and-paper RPG produced by Steve Jackson Games. It’s point-based and designed to work reasonably well with any background. That means I can use it for fantasy and sci-fi characters, and it means I’m not stuck with “you’ve selected the Ranger class and must select one of these abilities at level 3.” No levels in GURPS, just point totals. I largely ignore the point totals, but they come in useful for some things such as education. For example, younger characters should have fewer skills than older ones or those who have had intensive training. A lot of stuff just doesn’t make sense to worry over it, however, so I don’t. I build my character, decide how strong they are, how intelligent, their build…

Oh the build. Backtrack a little here. I used to judge all this by eye, but now I have a tool for DAZ Studio called Measure Metrics. That gives me more measurements for my character model than I could ever want. With the model built and me happy with it, I’ll take down their measurements in OneNote. Yes, I know the cup size on all my female characters, US and UK sizes. I can also tell you their wrist circumference. Fox is a C. I assume you don’t care how big her wrists are.

Back to the character build where I’ll be deciding on how attractive they are, how wealthy, what kind of abilities and skills they have, what kind of faults and flaws. Why bother? Because, while I’ll tweak these stats where I need my character to do something I’d never thought of, or (more likely) I realise they must be able to do something I didn’t put in the build, this character description keeps me honest. Ceri never pulls magic out of a hat without working as long as she needs to do it. Aneka doesn’t survive a plasma blast in one book which should have punched through the armour described in the last (unless the armour has changed). No one buys something in a shop which their character would never be able to afford.

Now, while this is happening, the world is taking shape around the character. (I’ve begun with a world and built the characters from it and it’s never worked. My books have a character focus and the world should fit to them, not the other way around.) I’ll be bouncing around creating more OneNote notes which fill in the background around the character. So, Fox is a ranking officer in a police agency called NAPA: I need to create NAPA, give it form and a rank structure, and layout how their geographical structure works to fill in that one element of Fox’s sheet. She’s associated with a guy named Jackson Martins and his daughter, Teresa, who own a huge conglomerate called MarTech: so MarTech (and Jackson and Teresa later) get designed and described. I need to work out the world’s social status hierarchy so that I have an idea of how wealthy Fox needs to be to support the lifestyle I intend her to have. Building the character helps me to solidify the world they live in.

So, now I know what my character looks like and what they can do, and I have a good idea of their character, at least in broad strokes. The last part, who they are how they behave, how they think, that comes from writing them and I may have to go back to update the stats as I work along. I’ll do more concept pictures to decide on a look for a particular scene and it gives me a sense for the character’s style of dress, or maybe they don’t really smile broadly because their face pulls contortions if they do.

With Fox there was another stage because DAZ brought out the Genesis 3 Female model while I was writing Fox Hunt. Wanting to try out the new tech, I recreated Fox as a G3F and was then faced with whether I like the old model or the new. I eventually went with the new one, so her look changed a little. I actually took the old model and altered it some to create Fox’s mother, so that wasn’t wasted.

So this was actually produced to test out some new eyes, but it shows Fox’s new G3F face. The eyebrows have a less pronounced arch and I think the features are a tiny bit softer. I was never happy with the eyes until I found this pair of lovely blue-green peepers. Fox is set, at least until something in a book changes something about her and I need to create a new sheet for her. She’ll get updated over time, as she learns and develops. Characters grow over time and I have plans for Fox, some of which may never happen. It all depends on how her story develops. Can’t wait to find out what happens.

Patreon patrons can see some more images associated with the development of Fox, just posted on the site. Link on the right. There will be more public posts and concept art coming prior to the release of Fox Hunt on September 8th.

(PS. Took me longer to post this than expected. Hope it was worth the wait.)