Flight Blade Update – In Which Nero Finds Out Romulus Only Had A Lousy Flesh Wound From The Death Star. Is His Face Green!

Dictation using wax cylinder phonographThis past week was an adventure. Wife had a medical emergency. Then we had a sewer backup, which I had to clean up after Roto Rooter worked their magic. (As long as you shove toilet paper up your nose, wear a dust mask, and every stitch of clothing goes straight into the trash, it’s not so bad!) What does this impromptu environmental disaster and my wife’s distress have to do with writing?

Well, I managed to get it done anyway! Of course, things had not gone south Friday morning, when my wife called to say she needed to see her specialist right away. I got my words in by the time she let me know she was seeing her doctors. But that night, our sewer line, laid in 1922, responded as old drains do to soap, grease, and, well, people residue. The sludge was contained, but someone was going to have to clean up that, the water backup elsewhere in the basement (as in my office), and the two ruined area rugs. Once I stopped procrastinating and suited up with rubber gloves and some equipment we didn’t mind tossing in the trash, it took me about an hour. And yes, Saturday when the clean up went down, I managed to get it all in.

Which is good, because Sunday night, I got Tomle and Mitsuko, my two junior officers, on Hanar. And then we learn what happened to Suicide, JT, and Duffy after Second Wave. Yesterday morning, I had Mitsuko sit in on a meeting in which Tishla reveals what happened to her during Second Wave and why the Gelt woman isn’t bothered by a bunch of humans from the Compact demanding their colony back. Or why the humans with her don’t really want to go back.

I’m to the point where the this and the previous two novellas I’ve had in development will affect the ultimate draft of Storming Amargosa, which is the end of the Compact Universe for now. And Storming has already affected the ending to Flight Blade. The outline originally had Tomle and Mitsuko separately riding off into battle. But that’s actually a major plot point in Storming, with Mitsuko becoming something of a mentor to JT as he rides back to Amargosa hoping to liberate his stranded friends.

For now, I’m able to stick with the original outline. It’ll be the final three or four scenes that have to change.

That’s why they call them “drafts.”