dust in progress, and some original fic

[bedlamsbard]

...so clearly, instead of going to bed last night, I should have kept writing. I have Dust open in another window and I keep looking at it and going, "Okay, so the prostitute just pulled a pack of cards out of her cleavage; I know what happens next, so why am I not writing?"

No, I'm not kidding. The last sentence in the document is actually "'He’s not the only one we’re waiting for,' Maresti says, but doesn’t elaborate, just holds out his hand for the cards a buxom banshee – Amirandy, Elizar had said, head of one of three whores’ guilds in the city – produces from her substantial cleavage and shuffles before dealing them out."

That sound you just heard? That was C.S. Lewis dancing a tango in his grave.

I know what happens next! I just need to bring three more characters in, then we can get down to business, and then there will be some fighting and a cliffhanger ending.

In non-fandom-related news, I was going through the one short story I have managed to write (two years ago, for a creative writing program at Brown University) and formatting it so I can send it in to the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (if I want to do this writer thing I had better get on it), and pulled up some of my other original fic (not Spaceforce, dear God), because I poked at a couple of shorter things for a little while there. This was about a year ago, I think? I was coming down off Spaceforce and the entire senior project fiasco; I had my head in the United States military, and it showed.

Anyway, I found three hundred words of what looks like it was going to be a short story -- the only thing is, I look at it now and have no idea where it was going. The title on it is "The Gold Star Wives Club", which makes me think it might have been bad, and I really like it.

The United States Army does not make casualty notification visits between the hours of ten pm and six am. No news network in America makes such civilized distinctions.

The thing about Army wives is that, like their husbands, they are news junkies, and like their husbands, they both love and hate the news they hear, because it tells them if their husbands are being deployed or not and if their husbands have been killed in action or not, usually long before the Army itself does. Whole parties have been known to be staged around news broadcasts, a dozen or more women huddled around a single television screen to watch and pray and hold onto each other.

This was not one of those parties. This was a casual gathering of six women whose husbands were with the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne) – the Night Stalkers – and they were watching a Star Wars marathon on the Sci-Fi channel, because when your husbands and your country are at war, there’s nothing quite like a little space-oriented escapism. Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen didn’t hurt either, because Army wives are human too.

In ordinary circumstances, the Sci-Fi channel would be the last network to be interrupted by news of the War on Terror, but war is seldom ordinary and this was an especially brutal facet of it, even for an especially brutal war. A CNN reporter announced that three Army helicopters had been shot down over the Hindu Kush, with sixteen dead and another twelve missing in action. The 101st Airborne was in Iraq, not Afghanistan, and no ordinary soldiers would be deployed there, only Special Operations. And only the Night Stalkers would be flying other SpecOps soldiers.

Panic ensued. More than one woman began crying hysterically – these were young women, the majority of whom had husbands relatively new to the Night Stalkers, but one of them was more conscious than the others and made a beeline for the phone in the kitchen, dialing the company commander’s house with numb fingers.

Comments

[snacky]

That's a good beginning to a story. I like the set-up, with the wives being news junkies, and them watching a Star Wars marathon, hee.

Just replying over here for variety! :D

[bedlamsbard]

I just don't remember where it was going! I think it might have been one of those stories that takes place within a very limited span of time; they don't know until the CACOs come, and therefore they're all, temporarily, in the same mess, honorary members of what really is called the Gold Star Wives Club.

I...went through eight months where just about the only books I read were nonfiction military history and military memoirs, including two books specifically about Army wives.

[snacky]

Yeah, the title makes sense for a short time frame. If you're remembering it right! ;)

Well, you were writing military stuff, right? So, tons of research yay!

[bedlamsbard]

I really like that opening, too.

I was writing military sci-fi set in space with a military narrator, so yeah. *twitches* I have never had my head so in something.

[snacky]

I liked it too - that last paragraph really grabbed me, made me wonder what comes next.

Oh man, you went the total immersion route! My military sci-fi experience is limited to Space: Above and Beyond, but, yeah, that's the kind of thing you'd have to go all super-detail oriented on.

[bedlamsbard]

I was about two hours away from joining the military -- I lost my AFROTC scholarship because of a BS medical disqualification that I could have had repealed, but I didn't realize that until it was too late.

I love Space: Above and Beyond! I wrote fic once, somewhere.

Spaceforce -- my novel, it's actually called On a Pale Horse, but I just called it Spaceforce -- was a little like S:AaB. I want to go back to it at some point. Unfortunately, I think that means I have to go back to total immersion. *twitches* There's just so much.

[snacky]

Aw, that seems unfair. Is it something you're still interested in doing?

I loved S:AAB so much! I had old VHS tapes that I practically wore out until the DVDs were released. It's still one of my comfort shows - I'll just pop it in and watch a random episode from time to time. And god, crazy fandom.

Is it finished? Or do you need to do rewrites?

[bedlamsbard]

*shrug* I could still go in, if I wanted, just not on scholarship -- it's not as big a deal now; I'm more interested in writing.

I think I was, like, all of four when it came out -- I only saw it once it came out on DVD. I love that show a lot.

I need to rewrite nearly the entirety of it. There are two separate stories that I've been trying to figure out how to tell side by side -- what happened in the past and what's happening in the present (of the novel, I mean; it takes place in the near-future, when the U.S. is involved in an intergalactic war. It's actually really, really political, now that I think about it; the Rokasan War is very closely associated with the Iraq War, and there are other things), and that was always a problem to reconcile. I may, may have figured out how to do it. *prods hopefully*