Internet Dating For Spaceships

My story, "Socorro," about living spaceships that was inspired by the idea that ships are women, women on ships are bad luck, and captains are married to the sea, has gone live on Abyss & Apex! I don't know how well those roots show through the story, I think most people are distracted by the spaceship on the internet part.

You can read it here.

I am now going to spend the rest of my life pitching Space Noir, a book trilogy about living spaceships, and explaining that it doesn't include Pilar and Socorro and isn't even set in the same universe, sorry. About half the people who've talked to me about "Socorro" asked if there was more and wanted to see a book about them. So that's good, I guess!

Also one of the comments in the wild was: "I imagined the ships as gigantic manta ray-bird-octopus things" which delighted me beyond measure because damn that is so cool. I put that in someone's brain through the power of suggestion.

I had the hardest time thinking of a twitter description because all I had was "internet dating for spaceships" which is a little flip-- I'm finding my flippancy of description is inversely proportional to the seriousness of the story. I settled for "my story about captains and the spaceships who marry them" which is accurate but doesn't say anything about rampant death and the protagonist's biting sarcasm.

At least I think it's sarcasm. Even when writing it I don't know if Pilar believes what she's saying on some level or if she's saying it because she knows it's stupid. Probably both.

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I start work soon, which means the halcyon days of being a full time writer are over.

...So why I'm working on bullshit projects instead of, I don't know, cramming more verbiage into Space Noir or putting together one last short story, I can't tell you. The first Space Noir book is sitting at a little over 34,000 words after briefly flourishing under my new "who cares just write the trilogy in one go and everything will sort itself out" plan, because there was no accounting for the protagonists' relationship and how they came to an understanding about half a book before I expected them to. Should keep me busy, right?

Nope.

Monday night I woke up from a dream that wasn't particularly fleshed out but left me with a feeling and a skeleton on which to hang a story: a post-apocalyptic world where people are turned into monsters and their memories subsumed by some other memories. I dunno, some sort of genetic monster memory, my dream was a lot less concerned with logistics than it was with mood and the importance of this character not having their own memories but those of something non-human--but still someone that could be spoken to, reasoned with. It involved a man and a woman who were pretty close but not related, I think--mentor/mentee, neighbors, just two people against the world, I wasn't sure. Anyway the guy was a monster and she was trying to convince him to stick around, and honestly he was warier of her than she was of him. Dream logic doesn't care about reason or that my waking brain would insist on reversing the scenario: why would a monster be more menaced by an unarmed woman than she was of him? It made sense in the dream and it stuck with me.

7 AM and my brain screamed write it write it write it! I knew before I'd even gotten dressed why the monsters are more scared of humans and that's why they attack. I knew he was about twice her age. I knew he'd taught her everything she needed to make it alone.

Fine, I reasoned on the way to coffee. I knew the four plot points that I wanted to hit. Shouldn't take me more than an hour to write before I told the whole story and/or got bored and put the toy down to work on an ongoing project like editing Heart for the Sorceress or Space Noir. "Brain, I'm gonna write your stupid bullshit for you, and then you're going to do something useful." My subconscious doesn't care that post-apocalyptic scenarios are, like, so done; that nobody wants to see them anymore and neither do I because ugh, what new thing can you really do with this overplayed setting? (Except for the part where I was telling myself a story I wanted to see, always want to see, and almost never do.) My subconscious doesn't care that it had no specifics, that this idea wasn't novel in any way except that the monster doesn't mindlessly turn on the humans because I find those stories a lot less interesting than the matter of embodying and being the monster. My brain had a feeling, dammit, and it was gonna get felt at length.

5 hours later I had 7,000 words into this story. I hit all the plot points I wanted. But the story wasn't done. It was clearly just the start of an adventure. A long one. I had no idea what that adventure is, and I still don't, but these characters sprang from nothing to real, engaging people within the first ten minutes of writing.

Today I did a bunch of chores but still got out about 2,000 words, along with one instance where I accidentally a science: how do you get freshwater and power on an island? Hey I just heard about new discoveries in artificial photosynthesis. I think the point where I have to do research on science is the point where I have to admit that things have progressed beyond the bullshit stage--never mind that I spent a couple hours researching sailboats and I think our heroes live on a 35' Catalina though I mostly used the layout for this guy because lolz I've never actually sailed in a sailboat that size, just a 10' Catalina and a 44' catamaran. No. It was the science that made me go "uuuuugh this is big and credible."

"But you still can't sell it," said the voice in the back of my head. "Also you're starting work soon and you won't have entire days to fart away on monsters. Time's awasting." Then the voice rode off, cackling.