Ryan McClure's Blog, page 9

Ashes goes live on Amazon

I just got the notification that Ashes is now available for download on Amazon!

The physical CreateSpace copies are still being processed, but I expect they’ll be available within the next few days.

In related news, I also posted announcements about the book’s release to the two CG forums I visit, Foundation 3D and SciFi-Meshes, as well as tweeted Wil Wheaton, Felicia Day, Nathan Fillion, and The Morning Stream in the hopes that it might catch their eyes and prompt further spreading of the message. Odds are pretty slim, but doesn’t hurt to try!

Ashes of Alour-Tan: Released!

T-0 days until release! Today’s R…wait a sec. Maybe I should release the book! Ashes of Alour-Tan is now available for purchase on Smashwords and Amazon’s Kindle store! In the coming week, it will also be available for hardcopy purchase on CreateSpace.

Three years’ work finally complete.

Ashes of Alour-Tan: Chapter Two

T-1 day until release! Today’s Release Week Tidbit, by request, is the full and complete second chapter!

Time passed unmarked as Finton’s training continued. Deowyn made occasional forays from the tower, returning wet, snow-covered, sweating, or otherwise weather-beaten. Finton often watched him leave, but the sight of the world beyond the tower filled him with dread. Instead he focused on his magic.

After conjuration and transformation, Finton learned alteration–imparting motion to stationary objects. Once he mastered the basics, he moved on to bigger and more complicated applications of each technique. He created an entire weather system in the foyer, called down and trapped lightning from one of his conjured clouds, and even learned how to impart a semblance of life to inanimate objects using complex patterns of wind and motion. Deowyn had imbued the tower’s cleaning supplies with this sort of working, which kept the tower tidy without any other assistance. Finton’s experiments fell far short of Deowyn’s clear mastery, but he understood the principles.

Each success brought with it greater confidence. Finton soon stopped feeling daunted by the magus’s endless supply of new challenges. Instead, he wanted to know and do more. Working and releasing magic dulled every ache he felt over his lost life and replaced it with a bliss he had never before known. With it, through it, he could forget the pain that shot through him every time something reminded him of Lila.

“You’ve done well, young man,” Deowyn said, as Finton finished summoning every drop of rain off of Deowyn’s dampened cloak and into his own outstretched hand. The water assembled into a ball of ice. “To be truthful, you have exceeded my wildest hopes.”

Finton dropped the icy sphere, staring at Deowyn. The magus never gave such direct praise. “I have?”

“Oh yes,” Deowyn said. “I hoped you would be able to channel some small magic, enough to…to suffice. But you have done far more than that. You show all the promise of some of Alour-Tan’s brightest students. Most magi only dream of achieving your prowess at the height of their power.”

Finton beamed. “Thank you, Deowyn.”

The old man studied him for a long breath. He said, “It’s time, Finton, for you to begin assisting me in the Great Work.”

Finton’s mouth dropped open. “It is?”

Deowyn snorted. “Close your mouth lest it fall off and need to be stitched back on again. Yes Finton, it is. I have been without a talented companion for a long, long time. You are the first hope I’ve had of remedying that situation.”

“Thank you,” Finton stammered.

Deowyn raised an eyebrow. “Unless you have something pressing to attend to, I see no reason to delay.”

Finton looked around the library. His tutelage had kept him from thinking about it, but he realized all at once that he had no anchors other than Deowyn. This library had become his home, his studies his profession and his hobby all in one, and Deowyn his father, his teacher, and his brother. Reason to delay? Finton had little reason for anything that didn’t connect back to this man.

“No reason at all,” Finton agreed.

Deowyn nodded, and Finton once again saw that strange, unnerving twinkling in the old man’s eyes. “You asked quite some time ago about Alour-Tan. Come along and I shall explain.” Finton fell in behind Deowyn as he made his way toward the library door and out into the stairwell winding through the tower.

“Alour-Tan was the island home to the greatest assemblage of magi ever seen on Tryneya. With that much magic at their command, none dared challenge them. Fortunately for everyone else, their desires were benevolent: quiet study into the nature of the arcane. Most believed that we had just scratched the surface of what magic meant, and the more the magi of Alour-Tan learned, the more questions they had.”

Deowyn’s voice carried up and down the tower stairwell as they climbed the steps. Only one room sat atop the stairs, beyond the library–Deowyn’s forbidden study. Finton felt a charge of excitement building within him as they drew near.

“The greatest mystery the magi sought to solve was the mystery of death. Many magi knew how to prolong life, but none knew how to bring back one of the dead.”

“Looks like they figured it out,” Finton said, holding out his own decayed hand as evidence.

“In fact, they did not,” Deowyn said. “No one is quite sure what happened, but something terrible occurred at Alour-Tan. Every settlement, every single one, along the eastern coast of Ceteynia records a massive blast of light from the direction of Alour-Tan. All that remains there now is an impenetrable violet-black cloud seething with untamed magical energy. Anyone who crosses into the cloud never emerges.”

“A magic storm?” Finton asked.

“If that helps you imagine it, yes. A magic storm that has churned unabated yet stationary for centuries. The world lost its most powerful magi that day. Many of the best magical records and tomes went with them. The working of magic became the purview of a few small pockets of wisdom, scattered among those attuned to the world. No one would ever again command the sort of raw power that had been harnessed at Alour-Tan.”

The pair reached the door at the top of the staircase. Finton had seen the heavy wooden slab many times, but had never attempted to open it. His excitement and anticipation now mingled with fear. What mysteries, once forbidden by Deowyn, lay behind this door?

“But if no one from Alour-Tan discovered the secret to beating death,” Finton asked, trying to distract himself, “how is it you brought me back?”

Deowyn smirked. The expression always felt unnerving, but now it felt predatory. “I kept working on the problem.” He waved his hand over the door’s lock. It click-thunked in response to his gesture and the door swung inward without a further sound.

The circular room beyond was modest in scale. Books and magical equipment lined the walls. A small cot sat crammed against the wall opposite the door. Next to it rested a large desk, covered in books, with an unassuming stool tucked beneath it.

The center of the room drew Finton’s eyes. A massive iron cauldron twice Finton’s height across occupied most of the floor, half-submerged into the stone itself. It bubbled with luminous, viscous green liquid. Finton had no idea how deep the cauldron went, nor what kept it heated.

“Welcome to your re-birthplace, Finton,” Deowyn said, gesturing at the cauldron. “The liquid is the secret the magi sought–the Great Work of Alour-Tan.”

Finton took a tentative step toward the cauldron. “All you need to do is dunk a corpse in there and it comes back?”

Deowyn barked a laugh. “Hardly. It takes a tremendous amount of effort to prepare the body, even more to prepare the liquid, and the working itself is laborious. The ingredients required are costly, too.”

Finton stared into the bubbling liquid. “But this is it. This is how you return life to the dead.” Finton couldn’t tell if he felt reverential awe or abject terror.

“This is one of the keys, yes.”

Finton turned toward the magus. “What is it you plan to do with it?”

Deowyn smiled, the expression full of sadness and an iron resolve. “Keep people from losing the ones they loved. Since the beginning of time, we have all known the pain of loss. Now death need not be more than a setback. No parent need ever see their child die. No child need ever watch their parents slip away. No husband shall ever lose his wife. Not so long as this exists and we know how to use it.”

“An end to death,” Finton said, skepticism and fear warring for dominance in his tone.

“It should not be all that surprising a thing to consider,” Deowyn said, gesturing up and down Finton. “You have had quite some time to grow accustomed to it.”

“Will they all be like me?” Finton asked. “Ruined husks?”

Deowyn scowled. “Your body may no longer adhere to the misguided ideals of beauty you revered before your change, but your mind is far from ruined, Finton. What’s more, you will never again die through mortal means. The forces that returned you to life now course through your body to sustain it. There may be a limit to your immortality, but if one exists it is beyond my knowledge. Should those forces be disrupted…to be truthful, I am not sure what would happen. Nevertheless, you are still you, your circumstance aside.”

Finton wanted to argue, but saw a kernel of truth in the magus’s words. “I don’t know how many people would want to come back like this.” Finton looked down at his emaciated, gray-skinned hands. Bone protruded from the ends of his fingers, giving them the appearance of talons. “I have nowhere else to go. You knew what to expect; I don’t have anything to fear from being like this around you. But out there?” Finton pointed at the wall of the room with no real concept of what lay beyond. “At the first sight of me, my village would have raised the alarm and hacked me to pieces.”

“I am not suggesting we simply end the penalty of death throughout the world all at once,” Deowyn scoffed. “Change of this magnitude takes time.” He paused, considering Finton for a long beat. “Besides, we still need to confirm that it can be repeated. You may be a fluke.”

“Confirm it?” Finton asked. “How?”

“By trying again.”

Finton tensed, off-put by Deowyn’s mild demeanor. “Do you propose we wander around out there until we find someone recently dead?”

“No, young man,” Deowyn said. “I already have the person to be saved here in the tower. I have had her here for a long time, preserved against any further decay. Indeed, she may look no different than she did in life, if we are successful.”

“She?”

“Ilelyse,” Deowyn said the name with a degree of reverence and affection that Finton had never before heard in the magus’s voice.

“Who was she?” Finton asked.

“She was the greatest of us,” Deowyn said, “a blazing sun even compared to the best magi of Alour-Tan. She had such talent, such unbridled ability. She tackled magical problems in mere moments that renowned magi spent decades trying to solve.” Finton watched as Deowyn slipped into a silent reverie. Until now, Finton knew only the magus’s gruff exterior; he never revealed this much emotion.

“She was more than that, though,” Finton ventured.

Deowyn snapped out of his trance with a start, as though he had forgotten Finton existed, much less stood next to him. The magus took a moment to collect his thoughts, fighting down annoyance at having them interrupted.

“Yes,” Deowyn said. “She was much more than that. And she will be again.”

Finton understood. Deowyn had suffered the loss of someone he loved. Given the chance to bring Lila back, Finton would risk everything. In that moment, Finton would have done anything the magus asked. “What do you need me to do?”

Deowyn held himself back from smiling, but Finton saw the hints of it all the same. “I need you to help me power the procedure. It took nearly everything I had to bring you back, and you had not been gone from this world long. Ilelyse has been gone far longer. Though she’s preserved, pulling her back across that much time would be impossible for me alone. But together? Together we can do it.”

Finton tried to ignore the feeling of anxiety building in his chest. “How do we begin?”

“I’ve already started the liquid,” Deowyn said, gesturing at the steaming cauldron. “Ilelyse is in there. It will take several hours for it to suffuse her tissues, time enough to instruct you in the specifics of the working.”

Finton stared at the opaque sludge again. “She’s already in there?”

Deowyn nodded. “The longer she is exposed to the liquid, the better our chances of success.”

Finton suspected that an unspoken ‘I think’ belonged somewhere in what Deowyn had said, but he opted not to mention it.

“Come, young man. There is much to learn in the short window that we have.”

Deowyn proved a master of understatement. Though Finton recognized the patterns within the grueling working, the complex intermingling involved in putting the thoughts and sense-images together made his greatest efforts look like idle dabbling. It hurt to force himself through the mental dance. Thoughts had to shuffle and change so fast that he felt numb and drained after their first practice run-through.

“Are you sure about this?” Finton asked. “This working is the lifelong pursuit of the greatest magi in the world. I only just mastered the basics. I don’t think I’m up to it.”

Deowyn waved a dismissive hand. “Nonsense. The difficulty stems from deciphering the right workings rather than performing them. I’ve done the hard part. We need only combine our strength to bring about the working.”

Finton felt none of the magus’s confidence. He still thought his complex weather system the pinnacle of achievement. The entirety of that working represented the tiniest portion of the one now before them. Still, Deowyn hadn’t yet been wrong. At the very least, Finton would provide what support he could muster. His flawless memory guaranteed that he could do that much. He knew the working. He just had to perform it.

“Ilelyse should be ready now,” Deowyn said. “Are you?”

“I don’t know. This is pretty intensive magic.”

Deowyn reached out and placed a hand on his shoulder. Finton tried not to jerk away at the unexpected gesture. Whatever history Deowyn and Ilelyse had, it ran deep enough that Deowyn’s emotions pushed past his gruff exterior. “I would not have asked you if I did not think you equal to the task.” He dropped his arm back to his side. “Let’s bring her back.”

Ashes of Alour-Tan: Chapter One

T-2 days until release! Today’s Release Week Tidbit is a twofor, accounting for Thanksgiving yesterday. The full and complete first chapter!

Finton spent his days in Deowyn’s impossible library, reading about impossible things. Before the magus’s tutelage, Finton had known little of the outside world, let alone its rich history. Once the old man taught him to read, he pored through the library’s innumerable tomes, devouring information from those written in the languages Deowyn deigned to teach him and memorizing the glyphs in others to decipher later.

Whenever the magus reappeared from his frequent absences, Finton bombarded him with questions about what he’d read. Deowyn responded to each question as though expecting it, never once stumped or struggling for an explanation. Finton made a game of it, hoping to ask Deowyn some deep question to which the magus had no answer. Over time, Finton came to realize that Deowyn had taught him not only to read and speak other languages, but also history, philosophy, and myth. All the while, the magus never showed any sign of discomfort with Finton’s ghastly appearance and Finton’s gratitude for that made it easy to ignore the old man’s off-putting expressions and occasional unsettling chuckles.

During his education, they discovered that Finton remembered everything. He could recall with perfect clarity the smallest details, from waking up in Deowyn’s laboratory to the exact symbols on the pages in front of him. In contrast, memories of his life before remained veiled behind a nightmare fog. Trying to remember anything from that life meant first pushing through that fog and the more he struggled to remember, the more evasive those old memories became.

Occasional stimuli prompted memories to resurface unbidden. When they did, Finton lost awareness of the world around him until the memories played out. He dreaded these moments and sometimes he preferred not remembering at all. Even though it meant most of his memories of Lila remained out of reach, he didn’t want to face everything he’d lost. While the amnesia concerned Deowyn, for Finton it felt like a blessing.

Time had no meaning in Deowyn’s windowless tower and Finton gave up trying to track it. He never ventured far from the library, which could have accommodated every one of the tower’s other rooms with space leftover. He had no need to make use of the kitchen and Deowyn forbade him from entering the chambers at the tower’s apex. His existence now consisted of books and the ancient knowledge they contained.

In the midst of perusing Olkelban, a dry tale of the settling of a mythological city by dragons, Deowyn came into the library. The magus sat across from Finton’s place of study, where books lay in a disheveled pile. He produced a volume of absurd proportions and surprised Finton with a new challenge: learning magic.

“Working magic is not easy, young man,” Deowyn said. “At first, it will require a great deal of skill and focus to achieve even the most meager result. As you grow accustomed to its demands, it will come more naturally. Eventually, it will be an afterthought. For example–” Deowyn raised his hand, uttered a word, and flicked his wrist.

The entire library fell into darkness, save for the red glow emanating from Finton’s eyes. The magus flicked his wrist again, uttered a different word, and the library’s customary warm light returned. It happened so fast, Finton’s yelp of surprise felt like an afterthought. He tried to ignore the smirk on Deowyn’s face and grasped for something to stifle the terror and awe threatening to overwhelm him.

“Trivial now,” the old man said, “but that took me nine months to master.”

“What words do you use?” Finton asked, focusing on the mechanics of Deowyn’s performance to calm himself.

“Lïzh-up for extinguishing and zdruhl-um for illuminating.”

Finton crinkled his brow in thought. “I recognize those. Albizar?”

“Indeed. Good ear.”

“Why Albizar?” Finton inquired. Deowyn’s face clouded over, his eyebrows knitting together. Finton had asked the wrong question.

“My reasons are my own. Enough trivialities. You have a great deal of reading to do.”

The magus departed, leaving Finton with the tome. He opened its giant cover and found himself assaulted by a wall of complex scribbles more dense than any he had ever seen. Each symbol hinted at a book’s worth of knowledge, with concepts and notions embedded deep into the ink itself. If he tried to decipher them outright, they defied him and became impenetrable. He realized the secret only after letting his mind wander, when the symbols started making sense. His conscious and subconscious had to work together to understand this book.

When Deowyn returned, Finton had almost finished the oversized volume. “Do the words and gestures matter?” he asked without preamble.

Deowyn bristled. “Of course they matter! Without them, the working is just a complicated thought. But the choice of word or gesture is irrelevant, so long as you stay consistent. Over time, they’ll become part of your concept for the working.”

Finton nodded, feeling a little proud of having anticipated Deowyn’s answer. “I see.”

“Not yet, but perhaps in time,” Deowyn smirked. As it often did, his expression carried with it an uncomfortable edge. “Now it’s your turn. Put us in darkness, then return us to the light.”

Finton frowned, looking up toward the ceiling and the dull glow emanating from it. The library didn’t have any traditional source of illumination–no torches lined the walls, no candelabras stood on the tables, and no windows existed to permit sunlight. Without a point of reference, Finton struggled to visualize putting the light out.

From studying the arcane manual, he knew only precise thoughts fashioned in the correct way would allow the working to succeed. As Deowyn had just confirmed, the gestures and words merely provided necessary mental anchors. He tried to marshal his thoughts, settling on the image of extinguishing a torch. He reached a hand toward the ceiling and splayed out his skeletal fingers, curling the middle two back toward his palm as the old man had. Fixing the concept of the torch in his mind, Finton commanded, “Lïzh-up!”

Nothing happened.

Finton frowned and glanced at Deowyn.

The magus raised his eyebrows in amusement. “You didn’t expect it to work on the first try, did you?”

“I suppose not,” Finton said. “Hoped it would.”

“It never works on the first try. The most skilled magi to ever grace Alour-Tan failed on their first attempts.”

“Alour-Tan?”

“Focus, Finton,” Deowyn said. “Don’t just use one sense when constructing the thought. Use them all. You know what it looks like when light goes out. What does it sound like? Taste like? How does it feel on your skin, in your soul? You must perceive the entire result before it can be made manifest.”

“Why should light going out taste like anything?”

“That’s not the point,” Deowyn said, waving a hand from side to side as if clearing smoke away from his face. “The point is that you are not thinking about the result from every conceivable perspective.”

“Just to put out a light?”

“To put out a light with no obvious source without any direct contact from yourself, yes. Magic is not as simple as striking flint and fanning sparks on a torch, young man. If it were, everyone would be able to do it. It is also never easier than a mundane alternative.”

Finton furrowed his brow again and looked back toward the ceiling. “Every conceivable perspective,” he murmured, echoing the magus. He tried again to formulate the picture–no, the experience–of the light going out. What sound did a torch make as it sputtered? What did the odor of lingering smoke smell like and how did it taste on his tongue? Finton thought of the cold that came with darkness, the crushing isolation, and the fearful things that lurked there.

“Lïzh–”

Finton felt something stir along his outstretched arm, a strange tingling sensation cascading down its length as though he had leaned on it for too long. Warmth followed close behind, racing toward his fingers with fierce determination. A second life took root within the arm, its only goal to make manifest the construct he had built in his mind.

As the sensation reached his outstretched fingertips, he felt a new surge through his entire body. Unbidden and unexpected, a memory of Lila flashed through his mind.

They were together, far enough from the village that no one would bother them. A stream babbled nearby. Lila’s skin glistened in the sunlight, droplets of water beading and running down her curves as she came toward him with a mischievous and lustful smile gracing her lips. He wrapped his arms around her, then pulled her down and pinned her beneath him. She laughed, then gasped. Their breathing grew heavier, synchronizing with their movements. Finton felt a surge through his whole body.

The memory evaporated and Finton found himself in the library once more. The sensation from the memory coursed through him now, but twisted and bizarre. Here, the surge in his hands threatened to overwhelm his senses. Rather than a rush of pleasure, it carried an imperative that he release it lest he explode.

“–up!”

The light in the room flickered.

Finton jumped to his feet in a flash. “I did it! Did I do that? I did, didn’t I! I made the light flicker!”

He tried to ignore the unease Deowyn’s smirk elicited. “Yes, young man, you did. But the objective was to extinguish the light. Dimming it for the briefest instant hardly qualifies.”

Finton gaped at the old man. “Before you brought me back, I didn’t even know magic existed,” he protested.

Deowyn’s eyes darkened and his face twitched as though he wanted to respond. The moment passed, though, and he said nothing.

A new question occurred to Finton. “How long have you been doing magic?”

For once the query seemed to surprise Deowyn and the lingering darkness cleared from his face. “Well, now, let’s see…” Deowyn trailed off and stared into space for several seconds. Finton was starting to wonder if he had somehow put Deowyn into a trance when the magus continued, “A long time. A very long time.”

For as long as it took, Finton found the answer lacking. “That’s not very specific.”

“Yes, well, pay you no mind. I’m old. Leave it at that.” He pointed at the ceiling with his staff. “Keep practicing. Figure out the necessity for thaumaturgy. I will return when you have progressed.”

Deowyn disappeared from the library, leaving Finton to focus on performing the full working. Here he remained, he knew not how long, trying to make the lights go out. Sometimes they flickered, but most of the time nothing happened. He returned to the tome often to study both the basic methods and the specifics of this particular working, hoping that he had missed something the first several hundred times. He hadn’t. Instead, Finton suspected that the tome’s fundamental instructions omitted some key fact and that Deowyn had not yet revealed some crucial element.

Finton centered his mind once again on the task at hand. “I can do this,” he said to the endless, book-filled shelves around him. As he had countless times before, Finton reached out toward the ceiling’s diffuse glow and curled his inner two fingers. He constructed a sense-image of the effect in his mind; he had at least mastered that much.

He wanted the light to go out. It had become a grating problem that he had to solve. He’d poured enough time into learning the ins and outs, hadn’t he? The magic would do what he willed.

Finton added his rising frustration to the sense-image. He had the knowledge and had practiced the skill. Nothing could stand between him and his objective.

“Lïzh-up.”

Instead of the gradual release he had felt before, Finton all but fell off his feet as a surge of power slammed through him and burst from his outstretched hand. The entire process took a fraction of a second. Finton sucked in an unnecessary breath, gasping in surprise at the sudden explosion of sensation.

Gasping in the dark.

“Hah!” Finton cried out as he realized that his eyes now provided the room’s only illumination. He chortled in triumph, spinning around in the blackness with his hands above his head.

Armed with the missing piece of knowledge, Finton raised his hand back toward the ceiling. He inverted his sense-image of the working for darkness and imagined the room flooded with light. In his mind, the chill of dark gave way to warmth, the scent of fear and trepidation gave way to that of joy and safety. Finton commanded the sun to rise and chase away the fears of night.

“Zdruhl-um!”

The library filled with radiance once more. He surveyed his handiwork, beaming at the illuminated ceiling. “So that’s the trick? That’s what it takes?”

A slow, steady clap echoed through the library, startling Finton. He turned away from the ceiling and looked toward the door where Deowyn stood, a smirk on his face as he applauded Finton’s achievement. Something about Deowyn’s expression reminded Finton of a cat that had cornered a mouse.

“That’s what it takes,” Deowyn said. “Well done, young man.”

The dam holding back Finton’s pent-up frustration broke. “Why didn’t you just tell me?” Finton demanded. He stabbed a fleshless finger toward the arcane volume sitting open on his favored table. “Why isn’t it even mentioned in the tome?”

“Because it’s the most dangerous part of magic,” Deowyn said. He entered the room and walked over to Finton’s table. “If a magus lacks the conviction necessary to perform the working, the magic need not bend to his will. Most of the time, nothing happens. Should he waver while handling enormous power, though, unspeakable horrors can result.”

Finton crossed his arms, shifting his weight onto one leg. “Like what?”

“Horrors you are not yet equipped to contemplate, if you hope to retain your sanity,” Deowyn snapped, his voice taking on a sudden sharpness. “Don’t get ahead of yourself, young man. You have taken a very important first step, but you still have much to learn.”

This time, Finton rejected the magus’s cryptic response. He wanted an answer. “If it’s so important and so dangerous, why isn’t it mentioned in the tome? Why didn’t you mention it?” His voice went high, undermining the defiance he wanted to project. Instead, he came off as the rebellious teenager he had once been.

Deowyn raised his eyebrows and smiled, going from stern to amused in a heartbeat. “Because you have to find that component on your own to understand its importance. A tome and a teacher can equip you with knowledge and skills, but to apply them you must have the conviction to follow through. That isn’t taught. That’s never taught.”

Still not good enough. “Even if the feeling comes from within, why isn’t the need for it explained?” Finton pressed.

Deowyn sighed, an old man pestered by the endless questions of youth. Finton tried not to take offense. “Suppose you have never before seen a bow and I give you one, and an arrow, and tell you to kill a man. I explain the concept behind nocking the arrow, drawing the string, sighting, and loosing. Perhaps I even demonstrate it. Then I hand you the bow and arrow. You understand the principles. You understand the process. But you do not yet have the strength to draw back the string. Once you develop that strength, you must then further decide if you will kill the man. Without developing the strength, you cannot hope to carry out the task. Without the conviction you will not, even if you can. Do you understand now?”

Finton did not. Deowyn’s entire analogy set him on edge. “Why would you ask me to kill a man?”

Deowyn rolled his eyes, waving a dismissive hand. “It’s not about the act, but the will to carry out a task that is difficult or even repulsive.”

“Killing a man and turning out the lights are hardly–”

“Finton. It was an example.”

Finton relented. “Sorry.”

The magus grunted. “Questions are a sign of a hungry mind. Perhaps it’s time we feed it something heartier.”

Before Finton could ask what Deowyn meant, the old man raised an upturned hand. It adopted the working gesture faster than Finton could register. A sharp word from Deowyn spawned a perfect sphere of fire above his palm. The fire flash-froze to ice, falling to the floor as Deowyn slid his hand out of its way. As the ice hit the ground, it turned into water. The water boiled, steam rising back up, where it formed once more into a fiery sphere.

“Conjuration and transformation,” Deowyn said. The fireball winked out of existence without a trace. “Now that you understand, I expect it will not take you long to master these. I will return when you can do them all, in sequence. If you have questions, consult the tome.” Deowyn turned, his robe sweeping out in an arc behind him, and strode out of the room before Finton could voice any concerns, questions, or protests.

Counting down

We are now halfway through October. The day after Halloween, I begin the final draft of the book, with an eye to publishing by Thanksgiving. My book will be in the wild, available for purchase during the holidays. I am excited and terrified by this.

I’m looking forward to my beta readers’ feedback. I don’t entirely know what to expect. I’ve received some really heartwarming praise and some curiously intimidating intimations about criticism yet-to-come, which I suppose spans an appropriately wide gamut.

Meanwhile, I’m knee-deep in worldbuilding my next book. Rather than the second book in the fantasy trilogy, this will be the start of a science fiction series. I’m having a great deal of fun with the worldbuilding, which I take as a good sign for my level of engagement with the story-to-be. If nothing else, I’m two for two on crafting worlds that I’m excited about. Whether or not the world at large feels the same remains to be seen, but if I’m not writing something I’m excited about, no reader is going to enjoy it.

Once the fantasy book is in the wild, I’m going to dive head-long into the writing of the sci-fi book. The goal, other than writing and publishing another book, is to take everything I learned writing the first book and use it to write this book faster. The goal, ultimately, is to be able to publish 4-5 good titles each year, representing a release cycle of three months or less. We’ll see if I can hit that or not. At the very least, spending the time on a solid outline should preclude the need to do a “second” draft akin to the fantasy book’s second draft, which was really a complete overhaul of the seat-of-the-pants NaNoWriMo story. Outlines are our friends.

I’m toying with the idea of releasing at least the first chapter of the book for free, right here, once the final draft is done. I’ll be making a great deal of noise on Facebook and Twitter, too, which I’m sure will be a joy to all the people who follow me. I apologize in advance and hope that you will endure the shameless self-promotion. Hell, I hope you’ll help spread the word!

Pondering writing some tutorials

I’ve been kicking around the idea of writing up some Blender tutorials, specific to things that I’ve learned while modeling my Ambassador-class ship. The goal would be to promulgate knowledge of how to perform various operations that are common in other packages for creating detailed starship models. For example, MadKoiFish’s tutorials are an excellent resource for 3dsMax users, with some applicability to other programs. Explaining how to do each of those things in Blender might be a place I’d start.

The two that immediately spring to mind are Hull Paneling / Adding Shield Grids, and Creating Hull Windows. I’m open to other suggestions, too. What would you like to see a tutorial for?

Living in the future

I am writing this post while lying in bed.

That alone is not especially novel. What’s far more astonishing is that I’m doing so on a device that’s about the size of my hand, by simply sliding my finger across a picture of a keyboard.

On a whim, I decided to have a look at the Android WordPress app. I was curious to see if it would support self-hosted blogs. Obviously, yes. In the span of about two minutes, I had downloaded and configured the app, and now here I am, writing this bit of fluff.

We don’t have the flashy stuff, like flying cars or warp drive, but sometimes little things hit you and force you to realize, “Hey dummy! You’re living in the future!”

Some thoughts about warp drive

A recent article posted by Gizmodo, titled “NASA Starts Work on Real Life Star Trek Warp Drive”, has stirred up a bit of excitement, and rightly so. Unfortunately, as with so many science-related articles, it’s big on hype and over-promises with both its headline and article text.

First, this isn’t new. In 1994, Miguel Alcubierre published a paper12 detailing how we might construct a warp drive within the framework of general relativity. White (the NASA scientist mentioned in the Gizmodo article) is building on Alcubierre’s work, as others have (Van den Broeck, Krasnikov, et. al.).

The trick with a warp drive, or any space-time distortion within the framework of general relativity, is that it requires negative energy. What the hell is that? Just as matter has energy equivalence (E=mc2), “negative matter” has negative energy equivalence (-E=-mc2). We have circumstantially observed negative energy effects3, but only at tiny, tiny quantum scales.

When Alcubierre first formulated his warp drive (which, to be more precise, was a specific set of parameters fed into the field equations of General Relativity to attain the desired spacetime “metric” that would create a warp field), he realized that the (negative) energy cost of the drive would be greater than the mass of the entire universe4. Many scientists, inspired by his work, have come along since then and proposed improvements that have brought this requirement down5. This is what White is talking about with his “500 kg” figure.

The mass-energy equivalence of 500 kg of matter works out to 4.49×1019 Joules, or the equivalent of 10,740 megatons (10.7 gigatons) of TNT. In 2008, the world’s energy consumption was 4.74×1020 Joules, so it represents about 10% of the global energy production. Not an unattainable number, but still enormous–especially when it’s meant to be concentrated in one spot (a spaceship).

Assuming we had the ability to harness and channel that much energy, and assuming we could “flip” it so that it was negative energy rather than positive6, there are still some unresolved questions. The “great” thing about a warp field is that you’re moving spacetime, not an object through spacetime, so you don’t have to “obey” the speed of light. Light within your pocket of spacetime moves as fast as light always has: way faster than you. Light outside your pocket of spacetime moves as fast as it always has, too: way faster than you (outside of that pocket). The pocket itself is what moves faster than light.

But…that still means it’s possible for an observer to “see” you arrive before you leave, thereby introducing all sorts of time travel/causality issues. Causality is fundamental to, basically, everything we know about anything. Thing one happens, causing thing two to happens. Exceeding the speed of light — the speed at which information travels — breaks this. Thing two happens, then thing one happens and causes thing two. What? It doesn’t make sense; it’s not how the universe works. There is mounting evidence that, in fact, the universe must work with causality intact78, based on some really niche quantum mechanics stuff. This, alone, isn’t necessarily reason to lose hope, though. There are a number of scenarios and/or limitations wherein it’s possible that the nature of the warp field might distort space in such a way as to prevent “light cones” (descriptions of space and time relative to an observer) from inverting. TBD.

Finally, when one travels through space, one collides with all the little particles of dust out there. Space is unfathomably empty, but there are still a lot of them. Think about riding a motorcycle and bugs splattering on your helmet. Now, imagine that your motorcycle is traveling ten times as fast; those bugs just turned into bullets, and you’re dead if you hit one. Now, imagine you’re traveling faster than light and, rather than the bugs splatting against your windshield, they’re getting “caught” in the warp field’s leading edge as you travel through space. This particulate matter converts into energetic photons and other, more-exotic particles, at once, building up a doomsday radiation wave in front of your ship. When you get wherever you’re going, and shut off your warp field, this radiation wave is set loose. Everything in front of you, at the very least, is wiped out by what amounts to a supernova. It’s entirely possible that it isn’t directional, and instead just detonates — taking you with it.

So, yes, hurray! for serious reserach into FTL, and for not being satisfied with the speed of light being the absolute maximum speed at which one can traverse the universe. But just because NASA’s working on it, don’t kid yourself: this is a puzzle with a lot of really huge hurdles to overcome, some of which may be literally insurmountable.

And if they do build it, it might look like this.

Alcubierre’s original paper on arXivThe more digestible wikipedia article on the “Alcubierre drive”The Casimir effectThe paper detailing the issue with needing ridiculous amounts of negative energyChris Van Den Broeck, Serguei Krasnikov, et. al.We have no idea where to even begin with this one; we don’t even know enough to say if it’s possible or not!Novikov’s self-consistency principleHawking’s chronology protection conjecture

205 days and 80,700 words later

At 18:00 Eastern Time on the 17th of September, 2012, I tweeted that I had finished the third draft of the book.

I started this, the penultimate draft, on February 26, 2012. That makes 205 days elapsed. The draft weighs in at a healthy 80,769 words (according to OpenOffice, anyway), which represents a removal of nearly 15,000 words from the second draft. That represents a total average progress of just under 400 words per day, about five times less than my goal of writing 2,000 words per day. Alternately, it represents the removal of about 75 words per day from the second draft.

Formatted as it is, in manuscript submission style, it’s 463 pages long (not including the title page). Using the same word density, for the second draft, that represents the removal of about 85 pages. Don’t worry; the story is better for it! You can see the entire tracked progress of this draft here.

I have sent the manuscript to my next round of beta readers, who I’ve requested devote their efforts toward identifying plot holes that may have crept in as a result of such a major revision, as well as smaller syntax, grammar, and general wording issues that inevitably result in a work this long. This book will be dormant for me for a time, while they work through it. My goal is to finish the fourth and final draft by the end of October, with an eye to publishing by Thanksgiving. I will start on that draft as soon as I started getting feedback from my readers.

In the meantime, it’s on to the next story!