Tag Archives: wip

WIP: Last Week’s Ghost

Posted on December 29, 2016 by Cat

I’ve written two stories so far this week, but I think this is the one that will be the next Patreon story. Here’s how it begins. The ghost had chosen the apartment because it was as good a place as … Continue reading →

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WIP: Written in Cinnamon Foam (working title)

Posted on December 17, 2016 by Cat

Here’s something from the current piece. For fellow West Seattleites, the coffee shop in question is indeed the Admiral Bird. This is a sequel to “The Wizards of West Seattle,” which is available in Neither Here Nor There, just out this week!
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WIP: The Wizard of West Seattle

Posted on May 3, 2016 by Cat

This will be going out to Patreon supporters towards the end of the month. It’s urban fantasy, set here in West Seattle.

Being the apprentice for one of West Seattle’s main wizards – probably the main wizard, many thought – was not at all what Albert thought it should be. He’d been installed in the position two weeks ago and so far, all May Hua had asked him to do was walk her dogs, two elderly but still energetic Shih Tzus, three times each day. The rest of the time he studied in the workshop, but it was a self-appointed path and it made him itch, knowing that he could have moved so much faster if she’d been willing to guide him along it.

He said this – not for the first time – to Penny as they walked along. Penny was the housekeeper for Hua’s household, but like Albert, she was frequently at loose ends and so accompanied him on many of the walks. At first he’d been worried she was attracted to him, but it became clear soon that she was bored and he was a fresh novelty. “It’s been a while since May took an apprentice,” she said. She was appreciative of Albert’s presence, particularly since he praised her cooking vociferously. He’d learned a few things since his first, disastrous stint as an apprentice.
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WIP: No Clue What the Title Is Yet

Posted on March 10, 2016 by Cat

Working on a far future space story that is getting very complicated with its gender stuff. This is one of the things that annoys me sometimes about future space stuff — that it superimposes early 21st century (sometimes earlier) gender patterns in a way that I know is hard to avoid but which infuriates me when it’s unquestioned. I just reread The Pride of Chanur (OMG how is that out of print in hardcopy??) yesterday and love the way Cherryh handles the question.

Hence this story of two cultures clashing, and both the gender norms and the norms around the sex act are getting tangled up in interesting ways.
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WIP: The Ghost Installers

Posted on March 2, 2016 by Cat

Here’s a bit from the story I’m trying to finish up today, a young adult piece tentatively entitled “The Ghost Installers.” It actually came out of a dream that I had – a good reason to be keeping a dream journal.

We talked about that recently in a class – the need to listen to your unconscious mind, to pay attention to dreams and serendipitous slips of the tongue. To nourish it with a variety of arts and make sure its senses are satisfied. To give it space in which to express itself. Sometimes when I’m drawing, that’s when a story that’s mentally knotted begins to untwist itself and show me what my mind is trying to do with it.

The dream was just a moment, an image/situation that I won’t describe for fear of spoilers. Talking to Wayne about it the next morning, I found a story idea emerging, which we batted back and forth, applying the classic try/fail, try/fail, try/succeed algorithm, until it was fleshed out to the point that I jotted down a 250 word outline. Now I’m working through that from scene one till the end, but I think if I get stuck along the way, I might try moving to the ending and writing it, advice from this excellent post about writing process by Kameron Hurley that I wanted to point to.
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Working Away Plus Teaser from “Paladin of Anger, Paladin of Peace”

Posted on October 22, 2015 by Cat

I am grimly determined to finish Hearts of Tabat before the end of this year: I have my list of scenes and will get them finished by November 15, then crunch through a quick and hasty polish and get that to beta readers. At the same time I’m working on a couple of bespoke stories, several collaborations, and a few stories for Patreon.

Here’s a piece from this morning’s work on a Tabat story that is somewhat connected to the events in Hoofsore and Weary, which appeared in Shattered Shields.
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WIP: Teaser From “In My Brain Were Stored a Thousand Pictures”

Posted on October 7, 2015 by Cat

Malady could understand the concept of the artificial hand and how useful it could be in this life, but she didn’t understand why they put so much emphasis on it at first.
After two weeks at University, though, she did, because here they spent most of their time in meat life and very little in mind life, even in classes. And when they went into mind life, the things they got there were like the meat hand to Malanie – fripperies, seldom used.

Still, even here, plenty of other ways to do things presented themselves: rather than reach your hand for food, have it come to you in a floating dish or handed to you by a helper, probably mechanical but here they even had human helpers, which was truly odd to her way of thinking.

She said as much to her roommate Michelle. Michelle was short and peppy and purple-haired today, with turquoise stars over her cat-pupiled eyes. While her appearance changed from time to time – she had full mods, the best old money could buy – she was invariably a combination of irritated and amused at her scholarship roommate’s oddities. She said, “For gosh sakes, Mal, surely you want to do things for yourself? That’s what humans do.”

“That’s what humans do,” was one of her more frequent expressions, along with “That’s just how it is” and “That’s how they always do it.” The latter two had figured plentifully in her orientation conversations with Malady, who’d spent her flight and taxi ride in her Memory Palace and had only fully come into meat when Melanie demanded it.
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WIP: Teaser from Poppy and Letitia

Posted on September 21, 2015 by Cat

I finished up a story I’ve been wrestling with for the past week this afternoon. It’s for a game world, and it’s a fun one. I’m not sure why I had so much trouble with this one, but I rewrote … Continue reading →

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WIP: Teaser from “Ms. Liberty Splits Up the Superb Squadron”

Posted on January 10, 2015 by Cat

The meeting room had been storage area originally. Like everything else in the laboratory converted into headquarters, it was cramped, incredibly cramped, and more soon because of the outsized table someone had jammed into the middle. Chairs were crammed in around, an assortment of styles and shapes, as though everyone had elected to bring their own seating arrangement. In a corner was a small triangular table, holding a battered coffee pot and a perpetually empty plate.

They were the first to arrive, and Ms. Liberty took the opportunity to select, not the sturdiest chair (a hefty wooden bench) in the room, which the Unicorn would probably need, but the second sturdiest. Her augmented flesh was denser than that of most of the other team members, and she thought that breaking a chair would be a bad way to start off her first week with the team. The chair she picked was made of metal and was unyielding underneath her ans she sat down. She tried to relax into it, tried to assume the pose that would convey her attitude when others entered the room: not too eager but certainly on the alert.

Meanwhile, X wandered the corners of the room, extruded a long thin tentacle, which thoroughly explored the inner workings of the coffeepot, fingered the edges of the map of the world thumbtacked to the wall next to the nonfunctioning video screen. Over Antarctica, someone had scrawled in barely legible green pen, “Kilroy was here.”… Continue reading →

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WIP: Teaser from “You Remind Me of Summer”

Posted on December 16, 2014 by Cat

From the SF story I’m working on, “You Remind Me of Summer”. Think it will end up being 6-7k. Madhur hesitated in the doorway of the bar. No sign on the outside other than a weathered metal plaque set at … Continue reading →

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