Hello fellow weirdlings! Hello and welcome... to the opportunity of a lifetime! How would you, yes *you* like to have a say in which novel I start working on this weekend? What's that? You can't even imagine how lucky you are? Well believe it! Because for a limited time only, anyone can vote for their favorite story idea, and the most popular one is the one I'll start working on first! Without further ado, or futher grandstanding from Yours Truly, let's get to the contestants! 1) In the Land of Ice and Embers - A post-apocalyptic epic centering around a borderline sociopath with pyrokinesis and his emotionally traumatized clairsentient younger sister as they travel the ruins of the old world, following her directions to a fabled "promised land" where they can finally live in peace. Along the way they'll pull into their orbit a series of companions including: the runt of a litter of lycanthropes, so weak he can't even change form, a mute young man with the power to heal any injury at a cost to his own sanity, and an ex soldier haunted by her own insatiable lust for blood and battle. Will they find what they're looking for? Maybe, if they don't kickstart the second apocalypse first. (*Heavily* inspired by The Dark Tower, Roadside Picnic, and The Last of Us, with a dash of X-Men thrown in for flavor. Currently has an outline and 16,000 words that are both in need of serious revision. Stand alone novel, rated *hard* R for violence, language, and moderately explicit sexual content. Contains themes dealing with abuse, mental illness, and the fact that 97% of humanity is dead. Or worse than dead.) 2) Metastatic Book 1 A family split apart by what seemed at first like a freak weather event, but soon turned out to be the opening salvo in a hostile colonization of the Earth by an encroaching alien ecosystem. A father and son struggle to reconcile in Houston, the eye of the proverbial storm, while a brother and sister and their mother try to survive the onslaught of hostile xenobiology in the back-woods of Oklahoma. As people slowly succumb to an alien environment that twists their bodies and invades their minds, a faint hope shines from the unlikeliest of places... (Inspired by the Chtorr novels, my own experience with mental illness, and a very eventful day spent hiding out from a category five hurricane in the basement of a reinforced seismic data center. Currently has an outline and a few rough sketches of chapters. Part one of a two part series, rated R for violence, language, and graphic body horror. Contains themes of suicide, corruption of the mind and body, and a whole lot of desperate people too scared to stand together against an overwhelming foe.) 3) Phase Jacob Delacroix is your ordinary college freshman. Until he stumbles across something impossible: a thirty foot circular patch of *someplace else* that has somehow been teleported to Earth. And it brought along for the ride Fenn D'riss dar Faal: linguist, escaped slave, *alien*. Now the two of them have to form an uneasy partnership to evade a military quarantine and get Fenn back his home. Only *Jacob* ends up along for the ride this time. Stranded on an alien planet, injured, and reliant on Fenn for his survival, just how is Jacob supposed to make it back in time for finals now? And could it really be *that* hard to topple an evil empire on anothet world? (Inspired by the Transall Saga - and every portal fantasy you've ever read - a lengthy moral tretise on necessary sacrifices for the good of the many, and way too much time spent coming up with plausible alien societies. Currently has an outline and about 100,000 words that are in really poor shape. Part of a three part "series" of loosely connected works set in the same universe. Rated soft R for violence, language, and at least one instance of sexy gay alien lovin'. Contains themes of existentialism, resistance to tyranny, slavery, racism, xenophobia, the rise and fall of civilizations, and some brief content involving sexual abuse.) 4) Dirtsiders A hundred and fifty years in our future, a man wakes up on-board a derelict space station at Earth's 4th Lagrangian point. He has no memory of who he is, where he came from, or what he's supposed to do next, but a surprising amount of muscle memory that indicates a history of violence. This would be bad enough if it weren't for the sarcastic, sociopathic AI that he shares headspace with constantly ordering him around. She says he's special, you see. That he's got something inside of him, a spark that only she can see, and he needs to keep it safe until he can deliver it to where it needs to be. From L4 to the moon, to Earth orbit to the surface of our now dying world, long forgotten by our transhumanist children, who sought their own salvation in the partially constructed Dyson sphere that now sits at the heart of the solar system. What is our amnesiac protagonist carrying? Who is he? And why won't that damned annoying AI leave him the hell alone? (Inspired by the Marathon games, The Rapture of the Nerds, Accelerando, and really anything Charlie Stross wrote before 2008, as well as The Accidental Time Machine and a little bit of your odd roadtrip movie, but In Space! The second book in the loose collection of novels I'm calling the Phaseverse. It contains only one character in common with Phase, and all three books can be read in any order. Rated PG-13 for violence and language, and contains themes of loss of identity, existential dread, the Singularity, and something vaguely akin to Dissasociative Identity Disorder. Also cyborgs and a relationship between a man and an AI that totally isn't modeled after an unhealthy D/s relationship, no, not at all. Currently has about 5000 words, an outline, and various sketches of chapters.) 5) No Name But Dust Magic is real, a respected branch of naturalism known as thaumatology, and Vynnel Karan Carrier is going to master it. There's just two tiny problems. One, he's the bastard son of an Imperial soldier and an eastern Jackal, and as a half breed is just barely allowed to claim citizen rights in the Empire. Two, he's... kind of a shit mage; only two sigma above the unmagical population, just barely enough to let him squeak past the entrance exams to the Imperial Academy. But he's never let blatantly impossible odds stop him before. Except one night as he's out for a walk and a smoke, he stumbles across the scene of an attempted murder. Just barely able to fend off the attacker and get help, Vynnel discovers the poor sod who's life he just saved is Amal al Aseem, the third son of the Sultan al Aseem, absolute ruler of one of the larger vassal states that have just recently pledged allegaince to the Empire. Now poor Vynnel is dragged into an Empire-spanning conspiracy that involves the origins of magic, the Outside Gods, assasination attempts, and even the Emperor herself. Will he turn his back on his ambitions and betray a country that never really was his home? Or will he turn traitor to his new found friends, and report back to the Emperor on the burgeoning rebellion that the Sultan is rumored to be at the head of? Either way, he's going to get in a lot of duels, make a pact with an Outsider, invent air conditioning and fall all over himself in front of the alarmingly handsome Prince Amal. (Third in the Phaseverse novels - no I won't tell you how magic and transhumanism go together - inspired by RA - the story not the god -Dishonored, my desire to make a coherent and scientifically plausible system of magic, and the serious economic and cultural changes brought about by the invention of AC. Also the only one of my novels so far that's explicitly "furry", although Phase sort of leans that way, so if that's not your cup of tea, take that into consideration when voting. Rated PG-13 for violence, language, and some brief hints at sexytimes. Contains themes of racism, homophobia, the legitmacy of a government that rules by pure force, the desire to prove yourself to a system that will never value you, the inteplay between the scientific method and literal magic, and an awkard romance between Prince Amal and the very asexual Vynnel. Currently at about 7500 words and a fairly polished outline.) --- Note! --- You can only vote once, so choose carefully! Feel free to ask me for more details, which I will happily provide. Unless they're spoilers. Also bear in mind that I'm planning on writing all of these eventually, so this is just a vote for which one you want *first*. Thank you to everyone who read this far, and another thank you to everyone who voted!
I decided to go with Metatastic Book 1! Sounds like it might give me some horror terrors from beyond the stars heebie jeebies, which I am all about.
I'd pick no. 2, though no. 1 being inspired by Roadside Picnic is making me do grabby-hands at my screen, waaaaaant but 2 sounds like potential cosmic horror, which wins out
Well, there are horrifying things pouring through a rip in space in downtown Houston (Hahahahaha fuck you Houston! First you got nuked in Independace Day and now this! You deserve it all you traffic and mosquito filled hellhole of humidity!) *cough* Anyway. These... things, that are pouring through onto the Earth, they're from beyond... somewhere. Honestly nobody's 100% sure they even have stars where they come from. They certainly don't have things like "radial symmetry" or "a clear distinction between fungus and animal" or "mouths that *aren't* full of jagged, hooked teeth". But I'd like to point out that at no point did I cite Lovecraft as an influence. And not *just* because he was a raging racist and anti-semite. The thing about Lovecraft is that after a while he gets... boring. I mean, sure, the intrepid investigators seal up the breach at the cost of what little sanity they had left, but it's all for naught anyway, as when the stars align, OMM NOM I CAN DEVOUR HUMANITY? A universe where the side you're rooting for has zero chance of winning interesting like, once, tops. A universe where they *might* win, if only they did this and this, and avoided this, and made these horrible sacrifices of lives and resources... that's more interesting. Also Cthulhu is overrated. He's just a big green guy with a squid for a head. Not that scary. Now imagine you're cornered by something that looks, at first glance, like a silverfish, if silverfish grew to the size of mid-range sedans and were covered in eyes and armored plates, with legs poking out wherever there's room for them. It's almost goofy looking, until it moves. Nothing that ungainly should move that *fast*, and then before you know it Ted's body is rapidly cooling at your feet and Chang is running away as fast as his lanky limbs can carry him. And then you run. And the thing? The living nightmare of teeth and eyes and glossy black chitin? It *waits*, like it's toying with you, letting you get a head start. And then just when you're about to break line of sight around a corner it *moves*, and before you know it you're pressed up against an empty dumpster (because you turned into a blind alley with no exit, genius) and it's *right there* right in front of you. The way it moves is impossible. It just... jerks forward, like watching a stop motion claymation movie with half the film slides missing, and then before you know it it's right on top of you. You shut your eyes. You know what's coming, but you still don't want to see it. You shut your eyes and weep in terror and... Nothing happens. You open your eyes. The creature, the horrible amalgam of pitch black limbs and glowing red compound eyes, like dying coals... is gone. You slide slowly down the dumpser to the ground and sit there, blubbering in incomprehension. It's fifteen minutes before Chang manages to find you again. He helps you up. "What happened?" He asks. "It- it let me go." You reply, your voice still shaking. "It what? Do you know why?" "No! No idea! It ju-just *vanished*!" The two of you walk back to base in silence. Both of you wondering the same thing. Why? Was it just toying with its prey like a cat? Getting its sadistic thrills by letting them live for another day, another hour? Another minute? They don't suspect the real reason it left. It had nothing to do with either of them. Mother was calling. Mother had a task for all her quick and clever children. Mother had a *plan*. And the screaming meat that still occupied the disused corners of your new playground? It is of no consequence any more. Mother has something much bigger in mind. If I had to pick a genre for LoI&E, I'd say it was postmodern horror. It's not just that the world ended, and people were hurt, and people killed, and people bled out over scraps. That would be too easy. It's that when the world ended, it took structured reality with it. Now the laws of physics are more like local zoning ordinances. In one stretch of highway, eveything might be normal, if not for the rusted shapes of abandoned cars peeking out of the snow. But half a mile further towards the city and reality has given up on following the old rules. Chunks of cement the size of your head hang suspended in the air above the road. One section of broken overpass cants up sharply towards the sky, jutting up into the air in defiance of simple, old timey traditions like gravity. Nearby you can hear the steady, rhythmic breath of what the survivors call "meat grinders", invisible patches of oscilating gravity that will turn a human being into so much spaghetti sauce if they're dumb enough to get too close. You've seen other things as well. Places where entropy runs backwards, where you can literally watch an abandoned factory un-rust and return to pristine condition in half an hour. Places where the trees twist into knots around each other, raising their branches not to sky, but to some hypothetical point about twenty feet off the ground. There oak branch meets elm baught in a tightly coiled ball of vegitation. It hummed slightly, and you were filled with the urge to touch it. But you didn't. Once you walked through a suburb where everything alive, the grass, the birds, the *people* had been instantly turned to pale blue glass. Transparent statues acted out scenes from a world, from a life years gone. And if that were it, well, that would be enough. But it isn't. The fabric at the corners of your world is starting to wear thin, and other realities are spilling through the gaps. Just the other week you passed a desolate gas station, already picked clean. The faded sign on the roof said "Arbusto - Nationwide Quality". Not the name of a company you're familiar with. The world you grew up in had Shells and Exxons, not Arbustos and Paragons. But the world you grew up in didn't have people like you in it either. People who carried what everyone had taken to calling "boons". Yours was a simple one, a cantrip to conjure heat. Theoretically unlimited in size or temperature or duration, it's only the natural limit of your body's caloric intake that stops you. God knows why, when nothing else follows the conservation of mass and energy, but you can't put out more heat than you have stored in caloric energy. You can burn fat to power it - it would have been a hell of a weight loss program back Before. In a pinch you can even burn muscle, organ, vital tissue, the boon doesn't care. Just as long as the flame gets fed. It comes in handy for lighting your smokes. For some reason cigatettes arenxt high on people's "must loot" list. You've got a pack of Camels, a half pack of Marlboro red 100's, and two packs of Merit Menthols, whatever the hell brand that is. As you walk, you smoke, and you observe. You know she came this way. Her footprints are dead obvious in the snow. You'll catch up with her eventually, and when you do, you'll never let her out of your sight again. She's the one thing keeping you human. The one thing that stops you from giving in to the feral urges that tell you to hurt and kill and take what you want. You know you're not a good person. The tests said so, back before. The Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale, they called it. Amazing you can still remember the name. They told you to answer honestly, and you were bored with lying, so you did. They didn't show you the results, but the doctors never looked a you quite the same say afterwords. It doesn't really bother you, most of the time. If you're being honest, the only time it really does is when you're looking at her. Something about her makes you yearn to be a human being. That's why you have to find her soon, before you forget how to do that entirely.
Okay? I'm just into a slow maddening corruption turning friends and neighbors against you, like pod people shit and what not.
Did my reply sound a little douchey? I think it did, sorry. I just have a bug up my ass about Lovecraft. (And I'm suck covering the font desk for hours today. Hence the previous paragraphs. Boredom!) If you're in to the slow advance of a completely alien ecosystem that displaces or subverts any and all Earth life, and turns humans into a twisted mockery of their former selves, their minds shattered and their wills bent to serving an unknown Mother? If you're in to psychic inteterference so harsh that it literally gives people within twenty miles of the Rip hallucinations, night terrors, severe depression and violent or suicidal urges that can't be blocked or protected against? If you want to see a sea of fungus that has a very unpleasant reaction to mamallian tissue blanket the empty city streets? If you want to see vines that grow primitive eyes (the better to follow up on potential targets for Mother), or shield plants that literally break up and eat asphault and concrete with their roots and turn it into defensive fortifications*? Or a thousand and one other slimy, evil things hell bent on turning humanity into protein paste? Then yeah, you probably made the right choice with Metastatic. *Fortifications for what? We don't know. None of the things that have come through the Rip so far have used any techology more complex than a sharp stick, much less anything you would fire from cover. But these organisms are too perfectly adapted, too specialized to exploit life on Earth, to have evolved naturally. Something must have made them. Something much smarter and more ruthless than humanity. How long before they come through the Rip? How much longer until we can actually see the architects of this invasion, this extermination, face to face?)
Count me as another one for 'they all look interesting'! I'm torn between voting for the alien invasion and the AI parasite, but I'll be looking forward to whatever you end up doing.
Thank you! You know the main reason I started this thread (other than to ramble and show off my worldbuilding) was because *I can't decide either* so I thought I'd farm the decision out to other people. >_>
Good news! Three of the five books contain AIs! They are universally sarcastic little shits with chips on their digital shoulders* and they love nothing more than ordering protagonists around and cracking jokes. (No I did not have a hatecrush on Durandal at one point in my youth. Shut up.) *Get it? Chips? Microchips? I'm so clever. -_-
Okay, we are *tied* between Phase and Metastatic. Looks like the people that commented want Phase though! Any objections? Speak now or forever hold your peace!
Probably Phase. Can't say much more without spoilers but I *can* say that it contains a badass four armed genetically engineered murder machine who identifies as female, and an old lady diplomat chatacter who plays the "kindly old grandmother" trope to get close enough to stick a knife between your ribs. Metastatic contains a female love interest who is an order of magnitude more badass than both the male protagonists (and somehow never runs out of molotovs) and one half of the story is partially about why you do *not* fuck with the protagonists' mother under any circumstances. (I sort of write a lot of queer male protagonists, so I could definetly be accused of needing more female main characters. I try to subvert gender role tropes whenever possible at least. None of the *female* characters will ever be captured and forced to wear a gold bikini. I make no promises about Fenn D'riss though.)
Okay nerds! Phase it is! I've got a birthday dinner to attend, and then I'll dig up my old drafts and start revising!
