No Marigolds Update – In Which Captain Mercer Takes Down The Daleks With The Force

No Marigolds in the Promised LandSo it’s been a long two weeks since I wrote one of these. I crashed my web site simply by renewing my domain. (Thanks, GoDaddy.) Step one: Rebuild site. Step two: Regular backups. Step three: Plan to move site to better host eventually.

But work on No Marigolds in the Promised Land continues apace. Shifting back and forth, I’m now dividing time between the John Farno and the ship sent to rescue him. When I first started writing Warped, a lot of people questioned why I would want to have my wormhole-surfing civilization even bother. In my world, wormholes are bright and noisey whereas warp drive has been developed to leave its debris behind and not really make so much noise. Of course, the Challenger from Warped is not available yet, but the ship that proved warp drive was possible is.

But Marigolds is Compact Universe #0, so it comes before everything else. I can’t have that ship get into more spectacular trouble than the Challenger does, but I can give it interesting “technical difficulties.” It’s also an opportunity to flesh out the Compact and give a different perspective of “those people.” I suppose it’s obvious who I’m talking about if you’ve already read the other novellas and The Children of Amargosa. But to say who it is would be a spoiler.

I also had the opportunity to do a little world building. One of the worlds of the Compact mentioned but never seen is Dakota, which I envisioned as populated by Native American tribes. The star’s name is the Sioux word for “sun.” A moon gets its name from the Cherokee word for “the darkening land.” But the gas giant the moon is called Frankenstein because nerds. American nerds. Or maybe Japanese or Mexican nerds. The planet Earth is repleat with teenaged horror fans who went on to do great geek things.

Lastly, I’ve given myself a deadline to finish this beast. October 31. If I don’t finish by then, let the public shaming begin.