Part 2 of chapter 1 is posted. Jo takes a walk on the creepy side to try and get home faster.
The Ironworks
in General
General
Welcome Again for the First Time!
in General
Hello and welcome again! This is probably the first time most of you are seeing this version of the site.
If you ARE in fact seeing it, it means that all the DNS changes have taken place and you're visiting the brand new Squarespace version 6 version of Fiction Improbable. I'm still working the kinks out of it, but so far I'm pretty impressed with what I've played with.
Unfortunately, I also managed to hurt my back while getting the standing desk set up, so I don't have a lot in the way of writing, but I did get a start on chapter 33. I've included the link here, as usual.
If the link fails to work, it means there are some remaining DNS changes that may not have made their way to you yet. Please be patient if that's the case; it should work soon (within a day or so at most, I would hope.)
The Great Standing Desk Project
in General
Who knew a desk could hold so much crap?
For a few months now I’ve been considering how to go about making my desk a standing desk. Mostly my thoughts revolved around raising my displays, mouse and keyboard, but that always seemed precarious and inconvenient. Finally I took a look at how the desk was built (it has been a while) and realized that the legs are extendable. A quick trip to Ikea’s website to look up my desk’s legs confirmed that they will rise to exactly the level I’d need.
So for the last few weeks I’ve been trying to get prepared to make the change. I’ve found though, and I repeat, damn, a desk can hold a whole lot of stuff.
Wish me luck on this, I hope to have the legs extended in the next few days. Then the period of great adjustment kicks in as I find myself unable to sit and work anymore.
Across Interstellar Spaces
in General
One of the benefits of writing science fiction, as with all speculative fiction, is the freedom you have to break rules of convention that would confine you, if you were writing of the real world. One of the drawbacks is that there are some rules that can only be broken after they’ve been thoroughly throught through. And there are some rules you just have to adhere to.
In The Ship of the Unforgotten, I decided early on that 500 years of travel time for the Rose Dawn was a rough estimate at best, and that I’d likely have to rewrite that piece after doing some research on how long interstellar flights would actually take using a variety of propulsion systems. In light of how the story has gone so far, I’m thinking 500 years might be too short, but I don’t want to get it up too much longer. If I do, it’ll risk a collision with the time frame of the farther-future sci-fi stories I’ve written (and am working on.) This is intended as a sort of prelude or to them.
The other stories:
- Deck the Hulls
- An Improbable Journey
- Untitled Captain Koell Story (Work in Progress)
The nice thing is that while there is a risk of timeline collision, there is a lot of play, as by the time those other stories take place, Earth has long since been lost and become depopulated.
So now I suppose I need to figure out just exactly where the UTS Rose Dawn and the UTS Eden River were headed, how long it would have taken each of them, and then I’ll be able to adjust bits of the story as need be.
Chain of Command
I’ve been thinking more about the rapidly-upcoming Camp NaNoWriMo August, and I’m not so sure I’m going to do the rewrite of The Quick and the Dead for it. The more I think about the story and plan it, the more I think it really is a short story and not a novel. So I need to go with a different idea for the coming month. Luckily at this point I almost literally have ideas pouring out my ears, so it’s just a matter of sifting through them and choosing one.
For today’s update, at last I reach the end of the chapter, and the pieces are all in place for the final confrontation. The question of who will go and who will stay is decided, and a niggling issue of the chain of command is dealt with.