James Osiris Baldwin's Blog, page 7

Chapter Four

They were forbidden to pray to the Guardians directly. From their earliest days, they had been shown how they were unclean in the sight of the Lord. It was the Host who interceded between their soldiers and God-on-Earth. None of their commanders were in the room, but the squad knew they would listen as each man confessed their sins. Sev broke down while he spoke of his love for Twofer, sobbing in gratitude to the Host for relieving him from Hell. They told each other their shames and their secrets, because they all succumbed to temptations and idleness. They played video games and read books and fucked, but only within the squad, to keep the sin from spreading out. Mike prayed it out, and he and the others reached themselves like plants toward the sun. For the second time that night, Mike felt scoured, cleansed and clean.

The squad broke off their prayer after nearly an hour. Mike wandered from the circle to the shower, and then to his room. He stepped in, tingling numb, and paused in the doorway. Alpha was exercising in their two-room suite, counting jump and clap pushups with harsh rasps of breath. Mike watched him for a count of five, before Alpha spotted him out of his peripheral vision and stopped, mid press, to look up.

“Come on. Now you’re just showing off.” Mike peeled his shirt up over his head and threw it across the room. It smacked the edge of the washing hamper, teetered, and then tumbled in. “We’ve had a full day. Why the hell are you working out?”

“I didn’t puke today. We’ll have to try harder tomorrow.” Alpha pushed himself up, got the balls of his feet underneath him, and bounced up on his toes. He rolled his shoulders back. “You had your shower yet? I want a massage.”

“Yeah.” Mike’s fingers twitched expectantly, but he didn’t move just yet. Part of him wanted to just bask in the sensation of being cleansed from guilt. He didn’t want to lose that polished glow from the prayer so fast, but the rest of him was already mesmerized by the play of light over the muscles of Alpha’s back. He wrestled with his desire in a way Alpha never seemed to. Maybe it was because he was the Medic and Padre, just his own sense of responsibility to set a good example. Maybe it was a PatriotAlpha thing, the lack of shame. While they were technically identical, Mike knew that the Alphas were different somehow, imparted with natures that were harder and colder than the squads they led. He sat down on the bed, and Alpha thudded down in front of him.

“You looked pretty stressed out during chow.” When Mike set to work, he found Alpha’s shoulders deeply knotted, hard as armor plate. He manipulated his muscles with clever hands, working them loose. “Whatever went on between you and his Grace stirred you right up.”

“I don’t know what I think about this.” Alpha’s voice was a little flat, and tired. “I mean, I’m happy. But Twofer’s one of my boys, Mike. I don’t like it when anything fucks with my squad.”

Even God? Mike’s hands slid down the backs of his arms, fingers limp with surprise. He had never believed Alpha capable of saying such a thing. “But-”

“I know. He was Chosen. And I’m grateful, don’t get me wrong. It’s the best thing that can happen.” Alpha blew out a tense breath. “It’s just… real sudden. And Twofer, of all people. He’s such a shit. Remember when he and Niner put the banana spider in Fora’s cockpit?”

Mike snorted. He remembered: Fora swinging into the cockpit, the armor folding up over him, and then a girlish scream and a rapid reversal of the whole process as he bounced out again, flailing at his head and down his front. “Yeah. He nearly pissed himself.”

“Niner and Twofer… Lord help me. I don’t know how he and Sev worked out so well together.” Alpha shook his head, and leaned back against Mike’s chest. They all had the same broad, rough-hewn, strong boned faces, the same dark skin, dark hair, and deep-set eyes, but

Alpha always seemed larger than Mike ever felt. “My corona’s got a feed on all the dorm rooms here, you know. I can look in on any of you. You know what I see when I look in Number Three? Niner dancing around in his fucking underwear, trying to cheer up Sev. What if he just disappeared, too?”

Listen to the Dead on ANZAC Day

I am in Berlin right now, a strange place to be for ANZAC Day.

Lest we Forget.

In my grandfather’s day, and my great-great uncle’s day, Germany was the country of the enemy. Now, it is green and vivid and welcoming, and currently, nervous as hell because of the possibility that Russia wants to kick off World War Three. Or, as we call it in LILIUM, The Collapse.

In Memorial

When I was a child, I found a book of WW1 photographs in the local library: a huge post-book of spreads, maybe 15 x 13 inches or so. The paper was worn around the edges, and smelled musty and old. All of the photos were black and white. Picture after picture of burned out, worn out, shell-shocked, stubborn soldiers, sometimes shown as tiny dots on an endless wasted landscape. Nothing has ever affected me so deeply as those images. Men with punched out holes for eyes. Screaming trees in knee deep mud. You have to wonder. Why? Why do we do this to ourselves? And why, with the crisis in Ukraine and the possibility of war with Russia, are we tempting fate once again? Why do we act like war is an unstoppable force? The motto ‘Lest we Forget’, often heard in reference to war memorial duty in Australia, is utterly hollow if we do not learn from our mistakes. Oppose war in all its forms. Listen to the pleading voices of the dead, in Belgium and Poland and Sudan and Syria and Cambodia, to name only a few… the crushing burden of the millions and millions of people who have died in or as a result of war.

LILIUM News and Updates

But now, time for the lighter stuff! Read on:

God Has Heard has gotten some amazing reviews in the past few weeks. If you read the serial version or have bought the book, please tell us what you think by leaving a review or a comment.
New art is on the way: the main cast of Our Lady of Sorrows is being drawn, one by one. You’ll see them soon! For Work In Progress sneak peeks, join the LILIUM Email List or Follow Me on Facebook!
The God Has Heard paperback will be available soon. As soon as I get the first paperback proof, it will be up for sale!
A Beginners Guide to Writing will be published here on the LILIUM Blog: five articles helping you with the essentials of writing your own novels and stories.
I will soon be starting up Book Reviews (see below!)

What do you want to see on the LILIUM Website? Leave a comment and tell us all about it.

Book Reviews

I will soon begin reviewing other science fiction and military titles on the LILIUM website, because if you’re here reading my shit, you likely want lots of good books, right? I will be reviewing science fiction, military sci-fi, action and thrillers. If you are an author and would like your book or story reviewed here, send me an email at: aemath@theliliumproject.com with ‘Book Review’ and your story title as the subject. Indie titles are welcome. And while you’re here, sign up for the LILIUM Email List! It’s free.

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Chapter Three

The walk from chow hall to barracks was taut with anticipatory guilt. Every night, Mike masked his shame behind a nothing-face, a stoic soldier’s mask, as the squad filed out with the rest of their platoon beneath the blazing white and blue visor of Knight-Captain Finley. Mike was the last one out, as always, head down, watching the backs of Sixie’s boots with his heart thumping in his mouth. It had nothing to do with Twofer, though he was still on Mike’s mind, and everything to do with Alpha. This heat was the animal part of him, the core of sin his moral self enfolded like a barbed wire fence. Pavlov’s dog drooled at the sound of a bell; Mike’s bell was the efficient shuttle from mess hall to dorm, the walk back down to P-Town.

The elevator took them twenty layers beneath the graceful double spires of glass called Lord’s Cradle, home of the Host and, at the uppermost levels above the clouds, one of the avatars of God Himself. The underground PatriotSoldier barracks were properly known by their numbered floors, B-34 to B-16, but everyone called it P-Town. Every Patriot was bunked on those eighteen floors: eleven for the PatriotRifles, the grunts; four for the PatriotRanger heavy armored units and tank squads, like the Sams; and three for the black-ops and special forces guys, the P-specs.

The elevator emptied them out onto one of many identical, spartan floors, pie slices in the high-security catacombs that housed the UNAC’s standing army of Nephilim. Mike breathed easier here, where the Templars and Controllers rarely went, and where the only visible reminders of God’s vigilance were armed checkpoints. From there, it was a short hike to their dorms. Alpha lingered by the entry to the common area and caught Mike by the arm as he stepped inside, pulling him around on the one foot as the door closed. Mike pushed away with a short laugh, shoving his chest. Alpha caught his wrists, and to Mike’s relief, he finally smiled.

Jesus Will Come Back With an AR-15: The UNAC

One of the folks on my email list gave some great feedback, and also bought up a point I expect to hear a lot of in various reviews:

“I did get the Lilium newsletter today and followed to the website. The art is awesome, the stories sound dark and disturbing.

My in-laws were medical missionaries and knowing them gave me a different take on religion. As a scientist, I am skeptical of much — but they truly lived their faith. They made the world better and people more whole by their actions (They did not preach. They provided medical services). I tell you this because if you think all religion is brainwashing of the stupid then you miss some important aspects of why religion endures (and ensnares).”

This is mostly true. I have nothing against most religious people, but you have to admit: there’s no crazy quite like extreme religious crazy – especially when you take it to the level of a national ideology. Ask the Mayans and Aztecs how that went, pre- and post- the Spanish invasion.

The opening quote of GOD HAS HEARD is a quote from a famous and still very popular sermon written in 1741 by theologian Jonathon Edwards. I find it to be a really horrifying look into the psychological double-bind which religion is capable of using to ‘ensnare’. One of its central tenets is that one’s good deeds are not enough to protect someone from being cast ‘at any moment’, into Hell. Only by being a part of the ‘in’ group, the ‘saved’ who are chosen of God, can you escape this awful, precarious, uncertain state. I dare say it’s devilish in its ability to self-perpetuate.

As for the title of this post: http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-poli...

The UNAC is a post-apocalyptic version of the USA and Americas as imagined during a crazed Tea Partier masturbation session. While it may seem quite extreme, there are already people who think this way. People with money, and power. It’s quite horrifying. Combined with the increasing trend of people taking mis-information and satire sites seriously, 30% of Americans believing the moon landing wasn’t real, and the many hundreds of thousands of people who buy everything David Icke disgorges from his schizotypal imagination… the trend is concerning.

In due time, the history of the UNAC will emerge. And no: Christ hasn’t really returned in LILIUM… but wait until you find out why the Host thinks he has.

If you enjoyed that, feel free to sign up to the LILIUM email list! It’s free and non-spammy, and I’d love get to know you by name.

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Chapter Two

Lord’s Cradle, Arizona. Two weeks earlier.

It all started when Sam-2 didn’t show up to chow.

Templars of the Host were posted inside every feed hall in Lord’s Cradle, watching over the Nephilim rank and file from behind smooth white visors. The platoons of the Echo PatriotRanger Company were fed in blocks of two; eight squads of nineteen men passing in and out of chow within sixty minutes. The Sams kept their eyes averted and their voices soft on the way past their Knight-Captain, Templar Finley. You could talk before chow, but only if you kept it down, and even then: a quiet advance made it easier for Alpha to do the headcount and meant they got more time for food.

Sam-Alpha marked each soldier off as they entered: himself, then Bravo, then One thru Sixteen, with Mike following up the rear. Mike smiled and winked at him, but for once, Alpha didn’t smile back. Instead, he blew his whistle, and the Sams froze as he hustled back up the line, searching over them with a scowl on his face. His corona, a dull, brassy halo of compacted NCMs, spun and separated into a ring of swirling flat blades behind his head. He used the computer to assist as he marked them off a second time, two by two. When he was done, he looked to Mike and One-Six. “Mike, Sixie… you seen Twofer?”

Mike’s stomach dropped out. Twofer was their CTO, the squad tech. Mike racked his brains for the last time he’d seen him. When he couldn’t dredge any memory up from his meat, he queried his corona, but the Net had no data. “No, Sir.”

“No, Sir.” Sixie paused, speaking just out of turn with Mike, and grimaced. They glanced at each other before Sixie spoke again. “Not since Yard, Sir.”

The sun-lines beside Alpha’s eyes deepened. He rasped his hand over the short fuzz on the back of his neck, then turned without a word. Mike watched him march to the end of the mess hall and genuflect on one knee in front of the Knight Captain, whose inscrutable face had swiveled towards them during the line hold up.

“Did you hang with him in Yard? I don’t remember seeing him.” Mike leaned forwards by Sixie’s jaw so he didn’t have to raise his voice as they shuffled along. He didn’t take his eyes off Alpha’s broad back. “He was there for the exercise.”

“I know he was.” Sixie frowned. “I’ll pass it down to Sev. He’ll know where he went. Lord knows what dumbass stunt he’s pulling. They’ll probably find him locked in the bathroom trying to suck his own cock.”

Mike choked down a nervous laugh. He nearly missed his tray on the way up to the counter, reaching for it blindly and fumbling when it didn’t come up under his fingers. He could only pray that Alpha wouldn’t be punished. He was still talking to the Knight Captain, who stood at ease with his boots firmly planted on the podium that raised him above the heads of his soldiers, hands folded behind him. There was no way Mike could hear what was being said.

They were almost at the dispensers now, the machines shuffling out Nephilim-sized plates of food as fast as they could assemble them. ‘Chicken’ and pumpkin and peas, bread, protein shakes. Sixie elbowed him as they drew up to the counter. “Sev doesn’t even remember seeing him at yard. Alpha must be sweating bullets up there.”

Art in Progress

As well as writing, I am also an artist. Here’s some of the pictures in the works for the first and second LILIUM books: God Has Heard and Our Lady of Sorrows.

All about LILIUM: Interview with Ashlyn Forge

H.ARM Suit, by amazing artist Elliot Lilly. Not drawn by me and unrelated to LILIUM, but definitely an inspiration!

Have you been wondering what the hell LILIUM is all about? I’ve been singing and dancing and jumping up and down about it, but haven’t let a whole lot slip… until now.

Today I was interviewed on the Gay Sci-Fi group on Facebook by Ashlyn Forge, the author of the excellent “Toys and Soldiers” series, Sci-Fi with strong M/M romantic elements. Ashlyn is an enthusiastic promoter of authors in the Sci-Fi, M/M romance and LGBT genre fiction categories, and I was very flattered to have her ask me for an interview.

During the interview, Ashlyn and I talk about indie publishing, the background of LILIUM, the future books in the series, and the opening of GOD HAS HEARD.

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Ashlyn Forge: Could you tell us a bit about yourself? Are you a new author? Indie? etc. etc. As far as your art and writing goes.

James Baldwin: *Puts on his Robe and Wizard Hat*

I’m not new to the publishing industry: I worked as a magazine editor for a trade journal in Australia, and I’ve ghostwritten and edited several novels as a freelancer for some significant money. I’m yet to publish a novel under my own name – LILIUM will be my entry into writing and selling my own fiction.

Ashlyn Forge: Will you self-publish it?

James Baldwin: Yes! I’ve talked a bit about LILIUM to a few different groups on Facebook and other places online. It is being self-published under an experimental self-publishing model.

Ashlyn Forge: You write the title in all caps, is it an anagram for something?

James Baldwin: LILIUM is the series title – capitalizing titles is something often done in the publishing industry to signify a title and make it stand it against a background of text. It’s a habit from work, mostly.

It does have some symbolism attached to it. But first, the more literal meaning.

Sapheda, the Main Character of LILIUM. Art by James Baldwin.

The Lilium Project is a significant military operation which occurs in the stories, which are based around the experience of super-soldiers in a dystopian future. The super-soldiers are called Nephilim, because of their large size and demi-human natures, and they are all male. The Lilium Project refers to the creation of the first (acknowledged) female Nephilim in history, Isis and Sapheda.

The name also refers to the fact that it is a six-part series, and there are also more obscure references… Catholic/Christian references, and the Occult symbolism of the hexagon.

Ashlyn Forge: Sounds a bit like Neosapians.

Ashlyn Forge: I see a lot of cool artwork with it. Do you draw those yourself?

James Baldwin: Yeah – one of the reasons I’m self-publishing the way I am is because I’m an artist as well as a writer, and agents generally get leery about being pitched to by people who want their art to be featured alongside their novels.

The beauty of serializing a finished work online is that you have immense creative liberty on how to do so. I can incorporate a lot of the visual symbolism associated with LILIUM into the site itself, as well as illustrating certain characters and using those illustrations as part of the story.

Sapheda, in particular, is more a visual than an auditory presence for me. She’s a character I’ve been developing since I was around 8 years old, and I’ve always ‘seen’ her – so publishing her books (she’s in 3 of the 6) without accompanying images of her just wouldn’t feel right at all.

Ashlyn Forge: How do the images work? Are they actually in the novel itself?

From Humble Beginnings…

Let me start with the obvious: I am terrible at promoting my own work. Terrible. When I think about promoting my writing and art, talking about it, I suddenly feel the need to do anything except stammer awkwardly through the half-formed synopsis of my work in progress. My jaw gets itchy and I need to shave, or pick my teeth, or fuss with my pencils for the millionth time. There is also the eternal lure of cute cat videos, especially Maru.

You probably know how it is, even if you’re not a writer or artist. You want to put yourself out there – go to that party, meet that new friend, ask the girl/boy/other on a date. You want it so bad, but something else pulls you away and the moment passes you by. You sigh and figure it’s probably for the best anyway. No way would they actually be seriously into you.

And yet, I and probably you know somewhere, deep down, that… hey. Maybe they could be, would be. And maybe I’m cool, and nice and funny and, well, maybe they are, too. And one day, when we’re brave enough, we go out and take that moment when we feel it, when your stomach swoops and you force out that first awkward: “Hi!”

That’s how I’m feeling right now about my art – waving my hand, trying to catch a word in a crowded room, and wondering if it’s worth it while knowing, deep down, that even a fleeting encounter is going to be pretty fantastic and leave something in its wake. Something special, something new. You give something and you’re going to get something back, even from a single decent conversation.

‘Conversation’ is the reason I’ve decided to publish LILIUM in this format. Out in the open, dangly bits flapping in the harsh winds of The Internet. Legacy publishing involves a lot of secrecy and a lot of back and forth between author and agent and agent and editor and editor and publisher, which doesn’t permit authors to have an ongoing conversation with their readers while they’re creating something. It is one of the many problems with traditional publishing, problems which are becoming more and more apparent in this highly connected, BYOD (bring your own device)-to-everything kind of world.

So, welcome to my first, awkward salutation. What is LILIUM going to be, exactly?

At this point in time, it’s this website (which I built: hoo-rah), a partly finished manuscript and a mostly finished short-story, as well as three plans for other books and stories and a concept for the sixth installment. It’s also a work of many paintings and sketches, a substantial collection of notes, and a lot of dreaming. The genre is dystopian science fiction. There’s romance in there, and steep tragedy, and a whole lot of dark and crazy. There’s also Sapheda, the lady who graces the front page of the website. You can ogle her some more here: http://glorificatasura.deviantart.com...

There’s still a lot to finish. I’ve written four novel-length manuscripts now and they each take me about three months. A short story, God Has Heard, will be the first item on the LILIUM menu. More will shortly follow.

So if you’re here at this very early stage of the website, welcome! Updates on progress can be found on the bar to your right, and you’ll get the occasional screenshot or snippet of text in the author blog section. The site won’t be in full swing for another couple of months yet, but if you want to be on the VIP list for the release date of the first story, sign up on the email list over there. No emails will be sent on that list until we’re ready to go.

The News section will also eventually contain articles on the craft of writing. You’ll be notified of those, too.

So feel free to settle in, look around, read about how LILIUM works, and ogle the imagery helping to inspire LILIUM on my Pinterest gallery. You can find me on Twitter and Facebook, too.

You can also go listen to this song, which is what I listen to obsessively while I write the Nephilim and humans of the LILI-verse:

 

Also, AEGIS. Because I am testing my Glossary.

Chapter One

Mike’s prison was a circle of mud behind a burned out hulk of powered armor, the spot where he’d dozed, shat and shivered since the Sentry had killed everyone but him and Niner. On the first day, the trembling in his jaw had been a delicate distraction from Niner’s screams, a vibration tickling just under the ears. It became spasms that spread into his teeth and then down, until his heart banged behind his ribs like a bird beating itself against a windowpane. By the sixth day of waiting, he had the shakes from fingertips to toes. Bone-rattling tremors, painful spasms, cramping tendons.

Dehydration, the doctor in him observed. The rational parts of himself, the soldier and the medic, watched his own breakdown from a safe, clinical distance. First your kidneys’ll shut down, Mike, and then your liver. You’re already pissing syrup. It won’t be long now.

The rest of him was an animal that clawed at his prison of skin, howling from the inside. Mike stared hungrily at the rifle that God had forbidden him from turning on his brother and then himself. The furthest he’d gotten was to edge the tip of the barrel on his teeth, but his finger wouldn’t curl in on the trigger when he tried to squeeze. Even here, even now, there was no getting around God.

The humid jungle wind blew the stench of death his way. He lay outside of his useless armor, almost numb to the smell of his dead brothers out in the kill zone, and the cold, alien odor of burned and melted steel. Ten AEGIS lay slumped and scattered like twisted statues, turned to slag by the Sentry’s railgun. Some bits were still recognizable; the limbs, mostly. Fat raindrops slid down along jutting cannon barrels, pooled in the palms of their frozen metal hands. Corpses full of corpses. Mike couldn’t even remember which one was Alpha’s. He liked to think it was the one protecting him, because it was close to the front and his lover was that kind of man, but he couldn’t tell. They all looked and smelled the same: burned blood and hair, the metal charred, wet, leaking black fluid from around the cockpit seals.

From out in the narrow mouth of the funnel, Niner moaned.