phywriter.com|Prone to occasional grandiloquence

The second installment of my homage to classic SF author Keith Laumer is now featured in the June edition over at Digital Dragon magazine.

I placed a story with Digital Dragon magazine last year called Blessed Are the Peacemakers about a former space marine named Tenerife who has just started a new career with the Terran Diplomatic Corp. It’s now a year later and Digital Dragon magazine asked me if I’d consider sending them another story. It occurred to me that there are a total of eight beatitudes, so I wrote a new Tenerife story called Blessed Are the Persecuted. However, while last year’s story came in at an economical 2250 words, this one is triple that word-count. Due to the length of this story, I pitched the idea of splitting this one in half, and they agreed. Therefore, Part 1 is running now in June, and the triumphant conclusion will appear in July.

If last year’s Tenerife story was my Star Wars, this year’s is my Empire Strikes Back. It’s longer, bolder, darker, and deals with more weighty issues. In this story, we meet some familiar faces, and introduce new ones, including a complex alien race called the Garconne, who… well, you’ll see:

“After the Klakx, I understand the Garçonne are quite peaceable.”
“Oh, they are, as far as we know. The question is ‘why?’ They have no standing military that we can see.”
“Maybe they’re standing somewhere else.”
Phlagg laughed. “Where do I begin?” He started ticking things off on his fingers. “The Garçonne are shorter than we are. They’re apparently gentle beings who excel at cuisine, the arts, and making colorful, ingenious devices with their slim, nimble fingers. They don’t have hair on their heads the way we do. Instead, they’re covered head-to-toe with a fine, downy fur. They have an subtle sense of humor and the most interesting lavender eyes.”
Tenerife raised an eyebrow. “Lavender?”
Phlagg blushed. “Whatever. Purpleish, yeah.”
Tenerife crossed his arms and shook his head. “I still don’t get it. Militarily-speaking, the Garçonne sound remarkably unremarkable. I wonder what Rache’s real interest is?”
Phlagg couldn’t resist a knowing smile, almost as if he’d been waiting to deliver a punchline. “It’s a matter of the sexes.” He paused for effect. “All three of them.”

I hope you enjoy Part 1 of the story, and I’d love to hear from you if you like (or hate!) it.

“Blessed Are the Peacemakers,” an homage to Keith Laumer’s ‘Retief’ character, is the featured story in today’s issue of Digital Dragon magazine:
http://www.digitaldragonmagazine.net/

A former space marine is caught between his principles and his duty as he juggles working for an old enemy while trying to forge a crucial treaty with a ferocious alien race.

With this story, I tried to write something that was both fully Science Fiction and fully Christian. I like how it turned out. Thanks again to Tim Ambrose and Randy Streu for letting me play in their playground.

Stick around for the author’s bio at the end. I had some fun with it.
http://www.digitaldragonmagazine.net…eacemakers.php

Baxter made a good meal.

He and Jill ate well on the remote space station, but he always made too much food. By now, they were the only two remaining. Kumquats,tube sirloin, and real hydro tomatoes; the guys in Houston said they didn’t eat so well. That was before their signal went dead. Now it was him, and her, and the kumquats.

No one knows where the space monkeys came from, with their luminescent fur and swirling eyes. Their saucer docked and they gained entrance without setting off the electroalarms. That was the first of many mysteries.

Jill went to investigate, but Baxter stayed behind to mind his chili.

Jill hadn’t returned by lunchtime, so Baxter went looking for her after rinsing his favorite ladle.

He turned a corner and saw a crowd of them fighting over something on the floor. They seemed glad to be able to stretch all their many limbs. They were kind of funny.

One of them saw Baxter and produced a cheesy plastic ray gun in an awkward simian paw. Its aim was not effective, pointing the weapon at Baxter’s head, but melting the “You are here” display in middle of the corridor instead.

“That was rude,” muttered Baxter. He darted forward and wrested the weapon from its hairy grasp, and stepped back.

“Take that, you damned dirty… monkey,” he said, and pulled the trigger.

Turns out, their teeth were more effective than their aim. They leapt forward and ate the gun. Startled, he turned to run.

Baxter made a good meal.

The Declaration
by Johne Cook

This isn’t a story as much as a fragment of a story, and that fragment happens to be my first love scene, and it all came about rather by accident.

To make a long story short, I started to write something small and targeted and ended up with something large and sprawling. I utterly failed to achieve my intended goal, but there was one diamond in the rough – in the process of trying to write the story, I realized that I’d ended up with my first love scene almost by accident. I liked it too much to scrap altogether, so I’ve held onto it for an occasion just like this.

The scene is this; Beladri is your basic fantasy city by the sea. The Caducean Order is both law and church for the city, and is comprised of two competing houses, the Hand of the Dove (Knights Templar), and the Hand of the Vulture (Dire Knights). Beladri is an interesting society because marriage is outlawed. The Templar Knights believe in monogamy but are seen as heretical and aberrant. Their mates are called ‘war wives’, and if discovered, their heads are shaved, their children are taken, and they are banished from the city. Nothing legal happens to their husbands, the Templar Knights, but it is a defacto defrocking for them as well, as they must choose between staying and serving the city or laying down their oaths and becoming landless, powerless, and penniless. It is a terrible decision to have to make, and yet young couples in love continue to defy the social morays and meet in clandestine marriage.

This is a scene among two young lovers, secretly married but hiding their commitment, as they are on the cusp of event that will change their lives and the fate of their beloved city:

She was a remarkable woman. I will never know what she sees in me that persuades her to risk everything just to be with me, a Knight of the House of the Dove, a monogamous man in a city of socially-expected sexual ‘sharing’. I was a strange sort of rebel, a warrior priest hiding my fidelity from society.

As if to prove her exceptional worth, her sea-green eyes fluttered open at just that moment, and her eyes focused on me, and met my gaze.

She gave me a sultry smile and nuzzled my neck, and then she laid her head on my bare chest. “Ok,” she said. “Now tell me about it.”

Download: The Declaration

If you care to read more about how this came about, read more here:
Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve made my first paid sale to the new Christian sci-fi e-zine, Wayfarer’s Journal.

My goal with the story was to demonstrate that it was possible to talk about Christian ideals without being preachy. I also wanted to try to bring a strong sci-fi sensibility to the Christian audience.

The story plays around with various ideas of what it means to be human.

This is also something of a homage to Alfred Bester, the first sci-fi author to really blow my young mind. I’d read a lot of pulp by the time I read “The Demolished Man”. That was the work that demonstrated to me that one could write a work that was fast and fun while raising serious questions about humanity, vanity, and the evil the lurks in every man’s heart. The spector of the Man With No Face was so simple and so brilliant that it has never left me. The book was written in the mid-50s and won the first Hugo award, and I found it on my dad’s bookshelf disguised as just another book. Bester only wrote a handful of sci-fi novels, known more for other kinds of writing back in the day, but he was tremendously influential, and helped blaze the trail for those who followed.

My story is here: http://www.wayfarersjournal.com/cook.htm

Here’s a snip:

“My readers would love to know where you came from, what made you what you are, so to speak.”

“Ah, a classic question,” he said, “’What makes a man?’ Let me answer that question by telling you the story of Joshua Ziller.”

If I’d been using a pencil, I would have snapped the lead right there. I quickly composed myself.

As I took down the name with my expensive fountain pen, I was careful to betray no emotion. However, I would have bought a fleet of new aircars for our common waitress if it meant that he never uttered that particular name again.

Beladri is a city of magic, mystery, and supernatural forces. Beladri is defended and policed by members of two different houses of the Caducean Order; the House of the Dove (Templar Knights), and the House of the Vulture (Dire Knights).

I originally started developing a story for the now defunct Deep Magic magazine’s halloween issue, and wanted to write something where the antagonist was invisible, a spiritual assassin who masked their identity with physical evidence. It was originally meant for the shared world of Kenatos, but since then has become part of a sprawling work-in-process about the ancient fantasy city of Beladri. The story in question would eventually be known as “The Night of the Jester”. More on that in a moment.

While researching the backstory elements, I came across the following quote:

“National enmities have been always produced and encouraged by kingly and priestly policy. The wolf is the natural enemy of the lamb; the vulture of the dove. By instinct they are so…”                       Piggot’s Political Dictionary

I was having trouble getting my arms around the environment of the city and the relationship of the two houses. I remembered that Roger Zelazny used to write background segments or stories so he could work out details that he’d use for for-published stories later. With that in mind, I took a step back and wrote a prelude work from the perspective of Lorosz (pronounced Laroshe), a Vulture, a Dire Knight, essentially an assassin-priest. I wrote his story, “The Mark of the Vulture,” to get a feel for his character and to work out the first encounter between two opponents.

“I thought you were trying to kill me,” he muttered.

This earned him my second stare of the conversation.

“It wasn’t your turn tonight.  Tomorrow night’s a new day.  Go ahead,” I anticipated him, “do correct me”.

Writers.

I had so much fun with that that I wrote the notes for “The Wing of the Dove” about his counterpart, Sir Roddrick (this story incomplete). Lorocsz and Roddrick go together like oil and water (or ice and fire), and it was fun to scat about with that thorny relationship of guys who both felt they were men who served the same god, but in different ways.

I was a little surprised that the place was as neat as it was.  If he’d ransacked the place, he’d done it without waking me and without leaving anything amiss.

Clearly, he had some experience with this sort of thing.

Fortunately, so did I.

The two are thrown together again in order to solve the supernatural thriller of “The Night of the Jester“.

The Knight Templar threw back his hood and actually grinned.  “Good morning!,” he greeted him.  He flipped his thumb behind him in a casual gesture.  “I think one of your daggers went off that way,” he said blithely and started to adjust his vambraces.

 Lorosz was his face with the point of his most trusted blade pressed up under his jaw before Rodrik even had time to flinch.  “Those are knives, “Dove”.  In Undertown, we call this a dagger.”

Different characters from the two houses are the focus in another work-in-progress called “The Speculum Convergence” (which, incidentally, features my first bedroom scene, such as it is).

They call themselves “the Rat Street Hunters”.  I’ve actually heard of them before.
‘You shouldn’t be here,’ said the leader. 
‘One of us shouldn’t be,’ I agreed.

After six months of development and plenty of twists and turns, Ray Gun Revival, the e-zine, has gone live. We’re publishing the best space opera and golden age sci-fi (think the original Star Wars film and you’re on the right track). We’re publishing two issues per month, on the 1st and the 15th, and the first two issues are now up:

Issue 01, July 01, 2006

Issue 01:

34 pages

Cover: “Grand Space Opera Entry”, by Sidharth Chaturvedi

Overlord’s Lair editorial: “RGR Q&A”, by Johne Cook

Short Fiction: “Flinteye’s Duel”, by Sean T. M. Stiennon

Space Verse: “Star Pilot’s Grave”, by Marcie Lynn Tentchoff

Serial: Deuces Wild, “Reluctant Allies, Part One”, by Lee S. King

Featured Artist: Sidharth Chaturvedi

Serial: Jasper Squad, Episode One, “Exile!”, by Paul Christian Glenn

The Jolly RGR: Preview of Issue 02

Issue 02, July 15, 2006

43 pages

Cover: “Burning Empires”, by Erika Green, aka archaenon

Overlord’s Lair editorial: “The Death and Resurrection of Space Opera”, by Johne Cook

Short Fiction: “Galaxy Store”, by Scott M. Sandridge

Short Fiction: “Rest Area”, by Tim Baer

Serial: The Adventures of the Sky Pirate, “The Assassin of Patience Bay”, Part One, by Johne Cook

Featured Artist: Erika Green, aka “archaenon”

Serial: Memory Wipe, Chapter One, “The Silver Sun”, by Sean T. M. Stiennon

The Jolly RGR: Introduction of the Ray Gun Revival podcast, preview of Issue 03

http://raygunrevival.com/Forum/viewtopic.php?t=217

It’s never easy to admit defeat, but here it is.

On the first of November, 2005, I started the “Four For NaNo” challenge with the idea of switching up the intense, one-month “stretch” goal writing challenge. Instead of one unpublishable novel, I was going to try to produce four publishable short stories with the story genres dictated by visitors to the ole’ writing blog (emphasis on “publishable”). All things being equal, it looked completely do-able.

However, all things aren’t equal, not even close. While I was successful writing 55k words last year, I had a stable job at the time and was able to focus on one challenge. This year has been different. I started a new writing gig on Monday, Oct. 31st and have been throwing myself into that challenge during the day, getting up to speed as quickly as possible. In addition, I’ve been fighting an obnoxious head cold this past week, pretty much going home after work, making dinner, and going to bed shortly afterward. Finally, I’m also Managing Editor of an online e-zine, Dragons, Knights, and Angels magazine, and I’ve had to acknowledge that I don’t have time to fulfill my obligations to that publication and still accomplish the sort of stretch goal that I’d set for myself. I am loathe to let my personal writing affect a stellar publication like that, and that has led me to rethink myself.

It is now Sunday, Nov. 13, almost two weeks into November. I am 4444 words into my first story, and am maybe 2/3s of the way to a publishable story. I like how it’s going, I like what’s coming together, and I’m ready to do what must be done. Instead of letting my competetive nature dictate the rest of my month, I’m taking a step back, looking at the spirit of the competition, and have decided that it is more important to me to write one good, publishable story, than attempt four and wind up with nothing. If you’d like to read the first scene for this story, which I am tentatively calling “The Speculum Convergence”, you can find it at http://phywriter.com/option_b/ , password “b”.

I like the basic concept of the challenge that I was attempting but maybe what I need is another year of writing short stories to position myself to take a more realistic swing at it. Thanks for your interest in this project, and stay tuned. I’ll post when “The Speculum Convergence” is finished.

And, yes, that “19th Century Russian Novel” write-in genre did throw me a little (I’m looking at you, Shelton). Having never read “War and Peace” or “Ulysses”, I was frankly at a loss with what to do with that. Instead of ducking the category or making a mess of a genre that I know nothing about, I condeded defeat. I think that’s the honorable thing. I guess I have a year to bone up on that, eh?