Rubberman that hill

I was listening to "Master of Puppets" in the background (not my typical kind of editing music) as I was editing Rubberman's Exodus, but by the end of the following section, I was required by law to switch to "Running up that hill". Sasha recently discovered that she was very agoraphobic.... and yet...
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Tara had little time to absorb the idea before Sasha's grip on her hand tightened. “Us?” Sasha asked meekly, “going into that? And going out into all that to get there?” Her eyes were locked on the outside, wide, and darting around all that 'empty' out there.

Messenger cast a sympathetic eye on Sasha. “I suppose just Tara would be - ”

Sasha made a sharp whimpering noise. “N-no...” A mix of not having Tara with her, or worrying about Tara out there alone was terrible enough. But there was one final factor that she could address with less embarrassment. “I can do it. I'm going to do what needs to be done. I can do it.”

Tara took Sasha's hands in hers. “Are you sure?”

Sasha blinked with a nod, and did her best to reset herself. “I can. It's just right over there. I can see it, I'll be back inside in no time.”

“That's right,” Tara said, looking closely into Sasha's eyes.

“If you're ready...” Messenger said quietly. He turned to one of the nearby Providers. “I don't know how long this will take. Maybe an hour? I'll call if it looks like it will go longer.”

“We can do this together.” Tara said, holding Sasha as if it were a dance. They began slowly towards the void, but Sasha's breathing wasn't calming down.

They got ever closer to that looming void, and Sasha's confidence crumbled. “I appreciate what you're trying to do hon, but it's not.. it's not...” Sasha's steps broke any rhythm of dance, becoming smaller and less frequent.

Tara leaned in with a kiss, and turned the dance more intimate. She held Tara and did most of the work of moving into the light. “We can.” she whispered into Tara's ear, “We're together.”

Tears came from Sasha with a gasp that turned into a gentle sob. “And you're in just as much danger out here as I am. We have to go back.” Sasha gently, but forcibly moved against Tara's body, to try to push them back inside.

Surprised at the strength Sasha was using, Tara couldn't bring herself to fight with enough force to correct their course. Instead, she simply stopped, and grabbed Sasha tight. “It... it's okay. I... you win.” Holding her so close, Sasha's trembling breath seemed to overtake them both.

Messenger quietly stepped closer, and held out the comm device Tavish had given him. “Hang onto this,” he said softly to Tara, “I can probably get the Colonel to call you on it if we need to talk.” After Tara took it, Messenger began walking back to the AirLimb.

“Neil,” Tara called to him, with apologetic eyes.

“I understand.” Messenger replied before continuing on, leaving Tara holding Sasha.

Sasha began to buckle, but caught herself. “I'm failing at my duty.”

“Hush.”

“And I'm causing you to fail because you need to take care of my weak ass.”

“Hush.”

“No hush, Tara,” Sasha said, pulling away. Before Tara could react, Sasha bolted out into the void towards the AirLimb, head low, as fast as she could. 

Big update, big changes...!

 Want the good news first or the bad news?

Good: 

-My 10-year-old son and I put out a silly little 24-page book. He ran the show, made all the final decisions and general plot. He also did about half the work of the cover.

-The third and final book in the Rubberman Series, Rubberman's Cage, is about 2 months from release. It rocks.

Bad:

-I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis after going into the hospital with what I thought was a mild stroke. The diagnosis is only about a month old, but looking back, I have a feeling it had been affecting me for a long time. As most of you know, I'm already a paraplegic, and I've recently passed 10 years of that, so... yay... double disabled now. SO FUN.

-I can't justify paying for my old webhost... frankly, it had a lot of capability I was paying for that I would never be using. SO, I'm in the middle of moving everything here. Including the ozero.ca domain.

Your writing voice, and BEING CORRECT.

In a writing group on FB, someone posted a snip of their WIP. People gave a lot of feedback, myself included, but several points made, (often with a great deal of conviction!) could easily have a counter-point that I felt would have been just as valid.

For example, someone pointed out 'head hopping' going on. I'm kind of blind to light head hopping, and am fairly guilty it that myself...

I tend to think of it as "the narrator takes the side of whoever did something last." ie:

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"Give me your lunch money!" Dave commanded. Usually, this was enough to score a buck or two from Timmy. He complained less than he used to. Good Timmy.

"You know I have to eat, don't you?" Timmy knew Dave didn't care. Frankly, Timmy didn't care a lot either. He'd given up, and kept extra money in another pocket just for this kind of situation. That didn't make handing over a buck and a half any more fun, but it prevented getting beaten up later.

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Is that head hopping? I guess so. Does it bother me? Nahhh.. does it bother readers? IT BETTER NOT, OR I'LL SEE THEM AFTER CLASS!!!!!

I guess my overall point is that you have good flow, and aren't making MASSIVE ERRORS, a lot of aspects come down to taste. NOTE- Don't make excuses for crap calling it your style. It is a skill to determine the difference at times. If it kinda bugs you a bit at the moment, but "It's okay like that.." there's a good chance it isn't okay like that, and will bug you when you read it years later.

There comes a point where you're just fine-tuning your voice. One person will tell you not to use the word 'said' to tag dialogue, the next will tell you that said is an 'invisible word' that gets in the way less, and everything in between. I've gotten a lot of mileage out of just leaving a quoted chunk of dialogue in close proximity to an action, and leaving it up to context to help tell the reader to understand who's talking.

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Tired of Dave's bullying, Timmy fled. "Bite me!"

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That said, I am a heavy user of "said" unless something else expresses the mood notably better.

Tuning ao many aspects like that are going to depend on your voice, and the scene.

and 2 months after publishing, you'll decide you made all the wrong decisions. And you'll be right. And wrong.

CongratulaI'msosorry.

Poggers.

 English, like any language, is subject to change and evolution over time. This is fine, and fascinating. From nouns being used as verbs, and slang becoming entrenched in the zeitgeist, I'm all for yeeting obsolete dogma. While still being able to recognize and utilize the old rules as appropriate and when needed.

Now and then this unbridled evolution can give us a bear with razor-encrusted tentacles flowing from the sides of its neck. Should it be observed? Certainly. Should it be accepted? How does it behave? Does it steal pick-a-nic baskets and shred campers? Observe, maybe run. Maybe dust off and nuke it from orbit.

Where do we draw the line between "suck it up, language changes and also sometimes facets of our culture have their own entire vernacular" and "This is horse-apples"?

Can you gronk it? Should you gronk it? Will not gronking it harsh someone's vibe? Would inadequate gronkage rob you of something fly or poggers?

Comma, Comma comma. Comma?

 In "writing thoughts no one asked for, and anyone who cares already has an opinion" #43857333, subsection commas 7434.

The line-

"Dad carried Ella and Grandpa carried the bike."

I changed this and put a comma after Ella. Why? When you read it, you understand properly what's going on. BUT... a comma does separate the thoughts.

Mid-way through the sentence, especially if you're not reading with strict attention, in a rush, stoned, whatever.. for a moment, your brain MIGHT be picturing Dad carrying Ella and Grandpa.

This is of course, idiotic. The comma isn't NEEDED. But its inclusion makes it more readily digestible.

This particular example is for work (name changed, obv) and the reports I edit are to be usable in fast, easy references by law types, but for my own prose, I don't want readers tripping as they read, even a little- (unless I want to slow them down for a reason, but there's smoother ways to do that). I over-use commas if anything, but if the clarity is at stake, I'll suffer a few too many commas over a few too... few.

This message has been brought to you by commas. Commas: for home, office, camping, or Oxfordian lists. Now available in wingding!

Coffee with Golconda review

E.A. Bass treated me to their eclectic sci-fi novella that's a blend "between comedy, drama, psychedelia and mystery."

It has a general feel of a collection of short stories that seem only tenuously connected at first, until the strings begin to draw it all together.

Before I get into the review, let's drop a link to its amazon page here.

Coffee with Golconda will tell you what you want to know when it is good and ready, and you will mind your manners until it does. You will flow between unique locales, imagery and thought-teasing metaphors that bring vastly differing settings vividly to life.

There were many moments when I felt strong Terry Pratchett influences, quirky yet meticulous, though that could just by my perspective- then in the next moment, things might turn surreal, or gently philosophical from the unique perspectives of Golconda and those that encounter him- only to shift to back quirky on a dime, then back again.

The world-building is gradual, doling out dollops of information casually, sometimes paying intense attention to a tiny detail, or referencing the bigger picture almost dismissively, or casually informing you that some of your assumptions were silly. (You should have known better, and Golconda will set you straight. When it's time.)

Once Coffee with Golconda has told you what it has to say, you might want to go back and read it again to see what you could not see before.

. -oO*Oo- .

Update from me about Rubberman's Exodus, quick status update as long as I'm making a rare blog post (I KNOW I should do more here, sue me!) I am past 60% in my second editing read of the 'final' book, after which it goes to my betas, and an editor, then one last editing read from me. The cover is basically decided, but as a fair warning to my longtime readers who have paperbacks of the rest of the Rubberman series... I WILL be launching with covers in the same style to match a full set, but I DO have general plans to address ALL of my covers. I've been vain (doing them all myself) and/or lazy with my covers so far... they're not laughably bad, but they're not great... the day to fix that is coming.

Oh, by the way, Rubberman's Exodus IS bigger than Cage or Citizens, and very very nearly rivals my biggest book to date, Echoes of Erebus. 

.... Erebus' daughter might have something to say about that in the future...

And they held each other. Fresh excerpt from WIP Rubberman's Exodus

Fresh scene, barely edited, so proceed with caution. Tara and Sasha are among hundreds of others in what equates to an internment camp built out of a repurposed fish processing facility. They recently had a very bad time in a bombed-out ruin, which was not helped by Sasha's agoraphobia.

Book progress is at 92k words. The ending is in sight, but it's got a fair chunk to go yet! Oh, and here's the current cover I have. The final will probably look a lot like this.

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“How ya doin'?” Tara said, putting an arm around Sasha's shoulders for a squeeze.

“Oh. You know. Spectacularly.” She grabbed Tara's hand and gave is a squeeze. “Same as the rest of us. Grateful to our kind hostess, and looking forward to trying to sleep in a room with a couple hundred other people again. With this stink. Oh, and there's that little wet spot outside looking at me.”

“Wet spot?” Tara glanced out towards the direction of the ocean. “Uh, yeah. That's... that's something all right. Hey. We gonna talk about what we saw in those ruins?”

Sasha's gaze shifted into a distant nowhere. “Can... can we not?”

“Okay.”

Sasha wrapped herself into Tara, burying her face into her shoulder, and squeezing at tight as she could. “Tell me that's not the world,” she mumbled into Tara weakly.

“Well... yes, we're told that place is like one in two places like that, and the vast majority of the world isn't... that.”

“No good,” Sasha said, squeezing desperately, even tighter. “Tell me that didn't exist.”

Tara nuzzled into the hair near Sasha's ear. “I don't know what you're talking about, Sash. We're home. We're in our room on our own bed. The generator's doing fine, and we even have the day off. I'm going to keep you in bed all day, and not let go.”

“Never let go,” Sasha whispered.

“Of course not. You're my Sash.” Tara gave an extra bit of squeeze, unsure if it could even be felt against how hard Sasha was squeezing.

“You won't let go because I'm weak?”

“You're my Sash.”

A few moments passed as they held each other, doing their best to ignore their surroundings.

“I hate being weak. I hate that it makes you have to … to deal with me.”

Tara moved back enough to look Sasha in the eye with a stern expression. “You. Are. My. Sash. I know how big it is out there. I know how that's making you feel. I have trouble logically understanding that hugeness out there. You can't help how much it affects you, but you push through. I've never been prouder of how you handled that run to the AirLimb back at home, or how you followed me into those ruins. I've never been so ashamed of myself for bringing you there.”

“Tara, no...”

Tara grabbed Sasha close again, almost forcefully. Hints of sobs struggled to push their way through Tara's voice. “Y-you are my Sash. You're so strong, hon. You're my...”

And they held each other. And others held each other. Some needed comforting, others chose to explore cautiously. Others stared at the sea.

And night eventually came.

And they held each other.