Windchaser

Yes, I have actually got off my aft and posted two (yes, TWO) whole chapters of Memento Vivere.

On LiveJournal: Chapter 16 | Chapter 17
On Dreamwidth: Chapter 16 | Chapter 17

The Dreamwidth entries have much nicer formatting. I'm not sure why the font on the Livejournal community is so tiny? I'll need to go and find myself a better journal layout at some point.

The current state of play:
Some of Chapter 16 was written back in March, when I foolishly said "I'm getting close to having another chapter of MV finished" and proceeded to write almost NOTHING for six whole months.

Chapter 17 is all new.

Chapters 18 onwards aren't finished; 18 is close (so so very close), but everything after that is a big disjointed muddle of half-written scenes that I am nowhere near being done with.

Onwards!

A little bit of something that I've been playing with, since I saw the prompt "wearing each other's clothes" in a meme. ^__^ (I'm totally not putting off struggling to finish a chapter of FT, honest)

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After working all through the night, helping co-ordinate a rescue after a derelict skyscraper had collapsed on the Rustig border, Thundercracker was tired. He sat in the big chair facing the huge window, watching a flier stitch contrails into an insipid mackerel sky, nursing half a cube of high-grade and waiting for the sun to show itself before finally retiring to his room to get some much-needed down time.

He pinched the bridge of his nose and concentrated on bleeding off a little of the pressure in his helm. Getting all the injured parties out from under the rubble and shipped off to hospital had been fairly draining, and he could really have done with Skywarp’s help, but the teleport had been in a particularly funny mood. He’d mainly just got under everyone’s feet, before finally disappearing and turning off his locator beacon altogether.

It was only a general lack of energy that stopped Thundercracker going in search of his errant wingmate and delivering the well-earned punch in the head that had Skywarp’s name on it.

Calm, TC. Think how nice and cool and fresh your energon is. Think how good it’ll feel to get all your gyroscopes rebalanced, all your coolant lines depressurised, all your memory defragmented. When you get up, you’ll feel like a new mech.

He watched the sun begin to peek over the horizon, blushing an insipid morning sky with a subtle pink glow, and snorted at himself. Once I’ve strangled Skywarp, maybe. He deactivated his optics and allowed the play of morning sunlight across his enamel to lull him into a pleasant doze.

He was at the point of finally offlining altogether when the shrill squeal of outrage blasted into his awareness, rudely stripping away the layers of comfortable dormancy. Worryingly, it was male. More worryingly, it wasn’t Starscream. The blue Seeker leaped out of his chair, barely maintaining his sleepy balance, and collided with one of the easy chairs, already looking for attackers-

The house appeared to be empty… save for the raised voices, coming from Skywarp’s suite. Great. Knocking the bolts out of his wingmate's thick head could wait until he'd dealt with whoever was trying to kill him. Punching the fragger was a privilege only trinemates were party to.

Thundercracker launched himself at the upstairs level, narrowly avoiding crashing into the skylight, and vaulted over the mezzanine wall, already broadcasting an emergency code to unlock the door.

Barging through, weapons charged and ready for anything, he was not prepared for what he found. “What in Pit-?”

Two strangers occupied the berth. A large, bemused, mostly-white female Seeker with blue cheek flashes and a smooth helm, and a small, dark bike, glaring at his hands with a murderous expression in his crimson optics, blazing hot enough to melt sheet metal. It was the hottest, most baleful crimson glow the blue jet had seen in a long time, very nearly bright enough to light the entire room.

Or-… wait. The closer Thundercracker looked, the more he realised that the pair weren’t so unfamiliar, after all. The big femme bore the trademark police Battenburg in blue and yellow, the vivid squares marching up each wing, and in place of audio venting, she bore a rounded blue crystal lens on each side of her head. By contrast, the little dark mech was primarily black, with a smart silver “waistcoat”, and extremities such a lurid purple that it couldn’t be anyone other than-

“Skywarp?” Thundercracker finally let his hands drop back to his sides, and straightened up, able only to gawp.

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(It's nearly Nanowrimo, noooo)

( Fake cut to chapter 16 on Dreamwidth or LiveJournal ) In which Mirii visits the market with Yannis (who as always has an ulterior motive) and Sei begins to find out what his abductor is up to.

Posted words:
57,361 out of 100,000

I was managing to keep ahead of my count once I got into the story, but I slowed up a little over the weekend – I keep having issues with my plot (as in, lack of it), and I don’t want to take the cheat’s way out of adding something completely random. I do mostly want this to maybe be, you know, worth reading, when I’m finished? I have bullied the plot a little bit and noted down some things I want to happen, and in what order, so I hope I’ll be able to pick up the pace a little.
Written this year: 18,939 out of 50,000

Unrelated: I really wish those bots would leave me alone. I don't WANT to have to ban people from commenting unless they're on my friends list (as I'd get no comments then, haha. ¬_¬). There's nothing more disappointing than seeing you actually have a comment on something! then realising it's just some Russian spambot trying to send you to a phishing site.

Edit: OK, so I didn't get it finished "this weekend". BUT!

At last, I can make the post I have been itching to make since, ooh, about 1st November last year.

Drum roll please:
Ten months and nineteen days after I started it, the first draft of Memento Mori is finished!

( Fake cut to chapter 32 (Livejournal Mirror) ) In which Tevak finally gets his hands back on his prize, but Blink gets a little assistance from on high.

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and lastly…
( Fake cut to the epilogue (Livejournal Mirror) ) In which loose ends are tied up, and Blink gets one more opportunity to do good.

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WOO HOO

I now just have to edit it, and tidy it up, and get rid of the disappearing characters, and...

Edit: Typical - so excited to be posting it, I flubbed my html. (I forgot the password for the MM LJ at lunch, too - posting these last chapters is just dogged with failure.)

Slightly later than the post on my LJ; I didn't feel like crossposting this to places at 2:30am, haha. XD

( Fake cut to chapter 30 (Livejournal Mirror) ) In which Blink manages the incredible, and actually gets into the Institute. OMG. And finds a little surprise inside.

Just fyi, "Hoo-dees" is the colloquial name for hooting deer. I've only just started to think about their names and things; I need to do a bit of worldbuilding before I edit the thing up. I don't really want to have to use the word "deer", for instance, it was a stop-gap so I didn't get too stuck. XD

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So much for “determined to get the next chapter finished faster than the last” – I seem to have been even slower, this time. (It’s been about 40 days since I last posted! What.)

Again, “I am determined etc”, so I’m going to set myself a deadline, this time; next chapter by the 27th. That gives me a week to finally tame the creeping junkheap once and for all, and then a week to do the writing. If I can keep to the “50,000 in 30 days”, I’m sure I can write 6000 in a week.

Back to business. I actually posted the meat of the chapter before work, but ran out of time to link to it from my other journals, so here we go. Better late than never!

( Fake cut to chapter 28 (Livejournal Mirror) ) In which Tevak gives the Library an ultimatum – find Blink, or he’ll burn the place down – and certain little shocking revelations are made. Up in the danata colony, Blink struggles to work out where she’s meant to go from here – and scared that she’ll end up bringing the monster to their door.

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Another chapter in less than 6 weeks! It's a miracle.

I had wanted to get this chapter finished and uploaded on the 1st, because it would have been the story’s “6-month birthday”. Happy Belated Birthday, MM?

Actually I’m not particularly happy because it means I still haven’t finished it, and I can’t edit what I haven’t finished. And I am determined to have something finished enough to self-publish by the end of 2012. Cue, end of the world?

( Fake cut to chapter 26 (Livejournal Mirror) ) In which Sarmis manages to blow his own cover, and Tevak discovers his prize is missing (and promptly also blows up).

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Look, I got another chapter finished!

APRIL FOOLS

Oh, wait. No, I DID actually get another chapter finished. I'm not sure why this one took so long, I started it when I was on annual leave back on the... 12th of March, or thereabouts? It just didn't seem to want to be written. :( Maybe Blink likes it in the basement or something.

( Fake cut to chapter 24 (Livejournal Mirror) ) In which Halli spots someone sneaking somewhere he shouldn't be (alliteration intentional), Tevak lays down an ultimatum - as does Odati - and three of the smallest sapient creatures in the known universe hold out a very BIG hand in a gesture of kindness.

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I was thinking, on my way home the other night - if/when Blink gets switched back to her normal self, what would happen if Halli got caught in the fallout and "changed" with her? At least I have the perfect alt-mode for her - she could be a Halli-copter. HAHA *fallsover*

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Avatar was on again, last night. They only premiere'd it last sunday, so that makes two showings in one week. It does lose something on the small screen (especially when the sound on your TV periodically cuts out), and the storyline isn't exactly the most taxing on the brain, but I still enjoyed it. :)

My inner biologist does go WHAT about a lot of it - why does every animal on Pandora have six limbs, four eyes, and breathe through spiracles on their chest... except the Na'vi? Did they evolve in absolute isolation, or something? (OK, I know why, we have no six-armed people to motion-capture from.)

D'oh! This should have been posted a week or so ago (26th Feb), but I forgot to update this journal at the same time as my LJ.

( Fake cut to chapter 22 (Livejournal Mirror) ) In which Blink gets a much-needed (but not much-wanted) drink, and perhaps a new friend? Rae recovers enough to start making plans that Odati would definitely disagree with, and Whitesides pays a visit (or does he?).

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I know, I know, I should have posted this back on the first. Well, we're only one digit out, correct? Therefore:
belated
Happy New Year!

Haha. OK, time for a proper post. We'll start with my current project: Memento Mori.

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Hesger was once a gem of the Outer Rim; a young colony on a small forest world, important for its scientific prowess, and popular among holidaymakers for its beautiful scenery and health spas.

...all that was before the arrival of Hesgeri haemorrhagic fever, affectionately known as heff. Released accidentally by one of the teams researching a cure, the bioweapon ravages the population, in only a few years killing all but a handful of mutilated survivors, calling themselves “blights”. Under a self-imposed planetwide quarantine, the technological revolution collapses, and the cities grow derelict, with even electricity and running water turning into nothing but a distant memory.

It is on this abandoned world that Blink, a lovelorn robot girl trying to find a place to belong, finds herself; abducted, dumped and stranded, after a failed attempt to break into the mysterious Kust Institute of Science. With a future that looks pretty bleak, a dying cross-dimensional being “gifts” her with a new, biological body – a gift that is meant to help her survive, but feels more like a curse.

Blink must now come to terms not just with her new body and newfound mortality, but also that she may be trapped on this world for the rest of her life, with no way to even tell her family what has happened, and in constant danger from those who... don't precisely have her best interests in mind. Perhaps most importantly, however, she and her new friends must figure out the hidden extra that came with Frond's unwanted gift – a hidden extra that might just save the planet.

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I've got to what I think is about the halfway point (or maybe just over?) of "Memento Mori", so to make it a little easier to read than force people to click through each individual chapter on LJ, I've uploaded it as a PDF. If you click the little picture here, it should link to it. (It's just over 2Mb, and about 80k words. Should download fairly quickly.)

NB this is the first draft, so it's somewhat rough. Readable (I hope), but there's likely quite a few typos, flubs and dangling modifiers etc in it. ^_^

I am still going to be uploading the individual chapters to the Memento Mori LJ as I go, if anyone is interested in following along from there. Comments/critique/useful nitpickery welcome. :)

...I need to get me some icons. ¬_¬

(Lastly, I am of course quite amused by the fact that the skin I'm using on my dashboard is "Celerity". Come on, I had to.)

Edit: Where did these character flubs come from?