#project starbound

[jupyterproject]

[clpolk]

Developmental Beta Readers Needed

Project Starbound is in its third draft and is now ready for a fresh set of eyes! If you

are willing to read a long, novel length original work (currently 72,031 words)

are story-savvy and pay attention to character arc, setting, plot, and continuity

feel like you make too many comments on other people's work (spoiler: no, you don't)

are comfortable with saying, “This isn’t working, and here’s why”

have never read the manuscript before

can work in google docs

are okay with the story’s content warnings (see below)

then I need you to help me!

Please direct your inquiries to my askbox or fanmail/messaging.

Briefly, Starbound (a working title that I dislike) is a story about a former army surgeon who works with an unusual gentleman to investigate the murder of a popular news columnist, and their pursuit leads them to the truth behind a recent war. It's an adult fantasy novel with M/M romance elements.

Warnings for content: Murder. Violence. War and colonization. Domestic violence, specifically family annihilation murders. Oppression of magically gifted people. Antiquated views of mental illness. Forced institutionalization.

[clpolk]

the sunday six

post six sentences from your WIP.

Queen Constantina had been beautiful as a young woman, but maturity made her arresting. Her age rested easily on fine bones, her even, golden toned skin soft on a face that laughed, and frowned, and lived. A fortune of diamonds, topaz, rubies, and emeralds draped over lean shoulders and curved collarbones, the gems cut as autumn leaves. Golden oak leaves crowned her upswept black curls, threads of silver glinting without apology.

She reached out to touch my medals, lifting each one and feeling the profile of her own face.

From Project Starbound, an original fantasy novel

[clpolk]

Writing Wednesday

No writing this week.

No Editing this week.

I completed an outline draft of Project Blackwing, and I’m putting the scene cards into Scrivener now. I still have research left to do on the story, but I’m jotting down the scenes and thinking about the pace and stuff.

I read The Long Good Bye by Raymond Chandler. I liked it. I need to read more. and I think that Project Blackwing will be in first person, because that’s a hallmark of noir, and Dean’s in my head telling me the story that way. Which means a lot of readers won’t look at it twice because 1st is an unpopular pov-- but if it’s not 1st person, it would have to be second, and I think people hate that even more, haha.

Still not feeling like I can actually write anything worth reading. I’m off duty until the 1st anyway.

I kinda want to post the next scene of starbound. but I think i will resist.

[angela-mayfair]

Show Your Work: November

The first ~1000 words of Project Starbound:

Pigeons made soothing company during paperwork. They perched on the sill of the tall window that was the best feature of my office, come to roost for the night. Wingbeats sounded through the loose panes in the window and I paused in my patient log-writing to listen to their throaty calls, lulled by their sounds until my mailbox lid clacked shut.

The cart! I jumped up to intercept the clerk, but my chair back hit the wall at the wrong angle. By the time I freed myself they were gone around the corner, leaving only the odor of bad news behind.

An evening memo lay coiled in my mailbox. The once beloved sweet, gassy smell of barrel-printing from my days at medical school was now the odor of tightened belts and making do. What did they cut this time? Hospital laundry? No lunch for doctors, since the cold lunch they started serving wasn't a big enough economy?

I grabbed the page and hissed as the edge sliced my little finger.

It was worse than stale paste sandwiches--an order to discharge 30% of my Mental Recovery patients by next week, to prepare for the legions of soldiers returning home from the war. I'd have to choose as if anyone in a bed now was staying in a hospital for the cuisine and ambiance. Who was too mad to leave? Who was sane enough to go? I left it on the desk and put on my coat to meet Robin, jogging downstairs and out the front door.

An autumn breeze kissed my cheeks, a friend I hadn't met in years. The evening air had a streak of winter in it, a promise of frost on the grass in the morning and nothing at all of Laneer's everlasting summer and gunfire. Home. For a moment I believed it. I'm home.

The heavy door of the hospital swung shut behind me. I curled my hand around a cigarette to hide the tell-tale light of the burning end. I shifted to put a graystone pillar between me and the tree with the best line of sight to the front door. It was foolish, but the band of tension along my shoulders eased. Sixteen men. I had to choose them and send them home.

The hospital doors swung open, releasing a competence of nurses from the daytime shift. Robin slid out of the crowd, a hand-knitted cardigan flung over the shoulders of her gray dress and starched apron, clutching a hand-rolled cigarette. I touched the brim of my bowler and let her have the safe spot next to the ashtray.

"So you're late too," I said.

"Miles." The gap between her upper front teeth flashed in a smile that didn't melt the tension around her eyes. Maybe I had to come back in. Maybe one of my patients started tearing at his skin, or found something sharp to use on his wrists. Or started screaming and couldn't stop.

But she wouldn't be out for a smoke if it was an emergency. whatever had Robin troubled wasn't with the patients. I reached for my inside pocket. "Do you need a light?"

She held up a match. "I've got it. I'm just glad I caught you."

Not a patient emergency. Politics? Dr. Crosby on a rampage again? "What is it, what's wrong?"

"Nothing!" She tapped her cigarette on the back of her hand and slouched.

"No, that's not true. I wanted to tell you, before it gets out..."

She struck the match and let it burn while she cleared her throat.

I fought the urge to blow it out. "What is it?"

"I gave my notice. I'm going to medical school."

Oh. A good man would be happy for Robin. "Excellent. Congratulations."

She gave my arm a reassuring squeeze. "We'll stay in touch."

"We shall." She wouldn't be returning to Beauregard Veteran's when she became Dr. Robin Thorpe. She'd have a year's waiting list as a doctor with an office practice. Double that if she picked a speciality people respected.

She shook my arm a little, dragging my attention away from pitying myself. "I mean it, Miles. You'll still come to holiday dinner, won't you?"

"Will you have time to do up a fuss for holidays?"

"There's always time for family, Miles."

For her, that was true. Robin's family was a wonderful bunch, full of caring and affection. "I'll be glad to come for holidays."

"See? We'll stay in touch. Though you need to make a new friend at work." "Robin. You're scolding me."

"It isn't good to have work as your only companion--do you hear that?" Thin beaded braids bounced as she cocked her head.

The night air carried a peal of brass bells tuned to clash with each other, their dissonance joined by a chorus of bicycle bells and shouts. Cry-bells. We threw down our smoldering cigarettes and ran to the street.

A carriage careered around the corner. Cyclists scattered like startled fish. The driver hauled on brake and reins, putting his weight into halting the carriage at the curb. We weren't an emergency hospital. Could we help whoever had been rushed here? What if they needed a surgeon?

Cold pooled in my gut. I'd have to do it. There wasn't anyone else.

The coach door banged open and a gentleman leapt out, bearing a sick man in his arms. The patient's face lolled toward me, the shadows around his eyes deep violet. My heart kicked against my chest. Not just sick, by his pallor and the waxy look of his skin. This man was dying. He lifted his trembling hand and clawed at my coat lapels.

I got my arms under his shoulders and knees. "I'm Doctor Singer, Sir. We'll take it from here."

"I found him in the street." The gentleman grasped my arms and between us we made a carry chair. "I'm Tristan Hunter."

I gawped at him for a moment but then we were moving like we had to outrun a tin grenade. "Did he tell you his name?"

"I didn't ask."

The sick man groped for me again.

"Sir? Can you tell me your name?"

"Nick Elliott," the sick man said. "Help me, Starred One. I am murdered."

[angela-mayfair]

The Sunday Six

from Project Starbound:

Beauregard Veteran's was a building in half-mourning, fashioned from gray stones and black framed windows, the kind with many panes pieced together to make a larger whole. It was the old site of Wakefield Cross before they moved into a larger, grander building further uptown and kindly donated the land to a then-sleepy and ceremonial army. It was never built to shelter so many battered souls, but the calm gravity of its proportions shouldered the burden with grace.

[angela-mayfair]

The Sunday Six

From Project Starbound:

A few hours of sleep would go unnoticed. It would sink into the routine of the morning. I took his wrist. His heartbeat fluttered under my fingers, exhausted but still running for its life. Crescent shaped welts reddened the palm of his hand. My vision slid out of ordinary focus and locked on the glowing paths of life inside Old Gerald's body: the rush of air as he breathed, the pulse of blood as his heart beat, and something that almost made me shut my eyes and drop Old Gerald's wrist. Red-brown muck concentrated itself in Old Gerald's head.

[angela-mayfair]

The Sunday Six

Tristan's two-floor flat was a house of mirrors. Instead of art and photographs mirrors hung on the walls, framed in gilt and rosewood and pale, hand-rubbed birch. The mirror next to Tristan's umbrella stand and the staircase stood inches above my own six feet, the frame carved in a garland of ribbon and woodland creatures peeking from behind lobed oak leaves. Identical silver-framed mirrors flanked a narrow corridor that led to the kitchen, where Tristan prepared a meal with his own hands.