I made this piece for an contest with the prompt "Electronic Emotions". I thought the result was kind of meh, and only decided to post it because, well, the work was already done, no point in letting it go to waste.
Not only did it win, but did so with one of the highest number of votes ever received. There is a lesson in there I'm still working on learning.
On my way to the Science Fiction Economics Residency! Two days of train travel! But it's well worth it. Flexing our economic imagination muscle fellow economists, policy makers and science fiction authors... what more could I ask for?
#PennedPossibilities 304 — How did your MC feel about friendships growing up? How do they feel about them now?
This one is easy. She was betrayed by a boy she thought was her soulmate at age eight. She distrusts friendship full stop.
She's learning how wrong she was now, and seems to be taking the advanced course in the subject with multiple boyfriends and people who intensely value and support her. Hearing someone loves her more than life itself, she of course commits herself to a deadly confrontation to save him, herself, and his attempted murderer.
#WritersCoffeeClub Ch 9 Nbr 03 — Does your work include pictures, maps or other custom graphics? Share your pics.
For my current WiP, I decided I could afford two covers (and actually paid for three). They depict two events from the story:
The very special glare a minor antagonist favors the main character with in a throne room when she subtly insults her.
The cliché embarrassing hot moment when one of the two love interests pushes the heroine/MC up against the wall, smacks arms to either side of her face, and kisses her deeply.
The novel /is/ a romance, amongst other things. Since I do my own titling, I'm including the untitled images in the relevant chapters.
In another novella with alternate covers that had little to do with the text, I did include in one chapter the artfully bloody piece of cover art, untitled of course. Yeah, he (the MC) uses a martial art that favors sharp edges.
For /reasons,/ I am not sharing any of these images. Sorry. However...
For one online fantasy novelette that had the vibe of a Theodore Sturgeon story, I bought a stock art image. It's of a katana amidst cherry blossoms. The MC is a seven year old Japanese girl sucked unwittingly into a fantasy world. Her misunderstanding of the semantics of the magic creates the sword, which she wields in the story. But it's her misunderstanding of the semantics (i.e., kid logic) that also defeats her antagonist... maybe. I used the art for the cover design. I've used crops of the image for emphasis and chapter breaks in this extra-long short story. See images.
(/Update: I learned my image posting service timed out my images. Thanks to this question, I am now repairing the story. I really need to host my own images.../)
I did include a map in a published book, as discussed in the linked Ch5 Nbr 13 reply to this prompt series. You're welcome to click the link (https://eldritch.cafe/@sfwrtr/111750589349655437) and favorite both posts. 😇
File this one under the #comingLaborApocalypse. Really, I can't think of a job that is safe, but these are soon toast. Consider supporting basic income #ubi before it's too late.
On today's #GreatestTrek, Tilly dusts off her away team skills to help Burnham visit a pre-warp society to find the next clue, and they both find themselves in a footrace that might not be a walk in the park.
Just finished “Record of a Spaceborn Few,” by Becky Chambers
Set in the same universe as (and with some references to) her “The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet,” and “A Closed and Common Orbit,” this is a another lovely, humane look at community, belonging, history and intentionality.
A spacecraft and spacesuit 2-in-1 concept with furry micro-macro-shenanigans. Furries sharing a spacesuit with micros is something I want to explore more in the future. Seems like such a funny concept, I wonder why it hasn’t been done before? Or is it I just haven’t seen it be done?
The suit is loosely based on something called the “Command/Control Pressure Suit”.
#PennedPossibilities 303 — Is your SC one to be haunted by adversity, or to use what they've gone through to become stronger?
I was going to answer only stronger, but because it is true, I'll answer haunted. She calls him /The Monster,/ and he savaged her, but from that experience she learned she could fight, and win, and never be chattel again. She refers to The Monster often, comparing her current actions to that paradigm of evil, and sometimes finding herself wanting. She's not what is often called /good./ Those who know her say she has a death wish. Once, when she thought she'd murdered in an act of enraged vengeance, she tried to stab herself at the source of her magic in her guilt. She's since then experienced and reacted to other things. Bad, things. She remembers. When she encounters situations in the current work that remind her of how she became stronger, they haunt her as she fights to make surviving her past worthwhile to those she helps in the present.
#WordWeavers 2405.02 — What are your MC’s living conditions like? Are they better or worse than average?
Wow, this question! A bit of background: I wrote the original novella, then wrote a prequel novel based on the history in the first story, then retconned the novella, worsened the situation and followed it with new events to make it a novel, /then/ wrote the sequel. It's her life story, now.
In this last story, the answer to this question is the running joke. The new work takes place over three days. She starts having been living with a fellow student, an ever-seeking-male-companionship elite who months ago offered her a free roommate situation—so long as the MC slept with her in the same bed (and her new roommate only sleeps well being held). The next day it's the couch after the MC is reunited with a former coworker (bodyguard) whom she introduces to her elite roommate. They hit it off. Noisily. All night long! The next night, not wanting a repeat performance, she connives to spend a (satisfying) night with her new boyfriend in "palatial" digs in the Residency where the main antagonist lives, but is currently out on a military adventure. Having reconciled with a childhood friend, the subsequent night she ends up on his bed, in a Residency guest suite, sleeping with him and a pile of thaumaturgy books they nerded out over. She regrets not having had more fun with him, but he's too sweet and obviously not ready for that. The next day, she's fighting for her life in a hospital.
Her living conditions are way above average, arguably superior.
Previous Living Conditions
Born in a nice house in an obscure village
Raised in a newly built mansion for a newly titled elite (her)
Homeless for months, having run away, living in encampments and wandering the east coast
Big city hostel for over a year
Gangland trainer's nice apartment with separate beds
Boarding house with aspects of a brothel, where she must defend herself
Leased a one room dance studio where she sleeps on a mat between a wall of open windows and a wall of mirrors, having no need of further furniture
A series of high line hotel and mansion rooms owned the Doña she works for
As for the homelessness, she was moving around without money while hiding her identity, and rarely stayed long. The worst was trying to sleep under eaves in the city during storms; she didn't always have a tent. Regardless, it qualifies as below average living conditions for a total of about a year. It did focus her like of asceticism.
American author E. E. Smith was born #OTD in 1890.
E. E. "Doc" Smith is considered a major figure in the history of science fiction literature, particularly for his development of the space opera genre. His first major work, "The Skylark of Space" (1928), is often considered one of the first space operas. Perhaps his most famous work, the Lensman series, began with "Triplanetary" in 1934.
"Absolute authority will be delegated. Full responsibility will be assumed. Those who succeed will receive advancement and satisfaction of desire. Those who fail will die."
All-Highest of Eddore, book 3, chapter 17. - Triplanetary
~Edward Elmer Smith (May 2, 1890 – August 31, 1965)