At this point I think I'm just picking titles like they're clickbait. I don't, obviously, have a cow. I might have a cow by the end of this post, but here at the beginning I've no noticeable bovine tendencies. 

So it's Well Written Wednesday, and clearly I didn't cue my posts last weekend which is why we've skipped Monday. I was wandering around this morning trying to find something to post about for today because the run up to AwesomeCon is actually starting to kick my butt and it's only going to get worse from here. I'm reaching that level of busy that means when people ask I sort of look at them like they've crawled from the seventh layer of hell--that's the one for people who show up at the DMV unprepared, and people who talk at the movies, and child molesters who say they just want to be loved.

Also, the weather here is shifting and asshole cat has turned into a tornado of neurotic woe. 

All that taken into account, today's not so much a good day for the writing of long-winded serious blogposty things. Have a fluffy cow and a top five list.

1) Hey Hey Hey! Everybody I know! How would you like to hear my pitch every day for the next seven years!
Obviously there's some finesse here. You've just published a book, or gotten into an art gallery, or (insert artistic or business thing here) and you have to tell people because...well...marketing is a thing whether we'd like it to be sometimes or not. But for the love of all things fluffy don't be that person who tells everybody the exact same information every five minutes in pre-set tweets for the next six years. Or the person who scatter-shot floods Facebook with their direct sales business stuff every single day.


2) "Hahaha, your kid is so cute! He reminds me of the character from my latest novel, Creatures from Slime Planet Attack!"
Most of us have learned, by adulthood, not to be the friend that makes everything about us. And I have a sneaking suspicion that people who hijack other people's stuff probably didn't, but it's worth reminding ourselves not to do that. Even when it's relevant. There's a fairly good chance it won't be appreciated and it won't help. 


3) Join my Street Team!
If you're one of those authors who has a Street Team go you. I hope that works out for you and you really love it as much as they love you. The entire concept of setting up what is essentially your own fan club just freaks me out completely. Also, I've yet to have a positive experience with any part of this phenomenon, or hear about a positive experience with it. 


4) "Hello all of Jack's friends, let me tell you about my novel!"
Ugh. A) Absolutely never ever ever, in any circumstances, publish your stuff in somebody else's space without their permission. If you do, you're a dick. B) You're still a dick if you ask to do it. Jack's friends don't want to hear from you, they want to hear from Jack. Maybe swallow your dickish tendencies and ask Jack to share about your book, if he liked it. But also accept that if he liked it and likes you he probably would have done it already anyway. You dick.


5) "Nobody likes me, I'm horrible, I'm going to quit. That's what everybody wants anyway." 
Okay, so I knew this girl in high school who used to do shit like this to get people to pay attention to her. She once faked a seizure because her boyfriend was paying attention to his ex. Don't do the passive-aggressive "someone tell me I'm pretty" crap. Just don't. I get that you feel like you're screaming into the void and nobody is listening. Actually, I think we all feel like that about half the time. If you want to whine--you're totally allowed, we all have moments--that's fine, just do it privately. 






Alright, that's everything from me today. Come back Friday and we'll talk about all the ways advertisement is going to be weird and horrible in the future! That sounds like fun, right? 

We're going to do a little memory exercise today, to start. Because we're going to talk about cool stuff like astronaut food and I don't want you to get too excited. So I want you to picture  something. Close your eyes and picture the last tinned meat you ate. Maybe someone convinced you to have Spam, or you had a nostalgic moment and bought a can of Vienna sausages. Have you hit the moment of that memory that reminds you of sadness and despair? 

Yeah, that's about the face. 

But hey, think of it this way. That foray into meat-of-sadness means you've contributed to what we're going to eat as a species when we launch ourselves into space, so that's not so bad, right? 

All of this began, arguably, back when the french government offered a prize for the person who could fix their food shipping problem during the Napoleonic Wars. A gentleman by the name of Nicolas Appert realized that food cooked in glass jars only spoiled if the seals broke. 

Now, good old Nic didn't understand why--and nobody would until Pasteur came around to explain micro-organisms to us--but he knew it worked. Well... It worked as long as you could transfer glass jars by horse/ship/human without breaking them. 

Somewhere around 1810 they started using metal cans instead. Which, you know, yay fewer shards of glass in your food. Boo, nobody bothered to invent the can opener for another thirty years. 

So, now I'd like you to sit back and picture yourself bashing a tin of meat-like-substance open with a rock. Or trying to open it with your bayonet without killing yourself. 

And that's the first rung on our race to the stars, right? Okay so maybe that's a bit of an over-simplification. But the fact of the mater is that NASA has spent an amazing amount of money, on the question of what astronauts are going to eat. And not just what they have eaten on all the voyages we've taken so far--Tang and M&M's and high-class c rations and that horrible dried ice-cream we've all tried at least once--but what they'd like to take in the future. 

Now NASA talks about developing 3-D printed food (paste tubes a-z are combined with ingredients 1,2, and 5 in highly programmed steps to create possibly the most unappetizing cheese pizza you've ever seen). Probably more to tackle the reality of boredom than because they need the help with nutrition. Astronauts are cleared to bring tiny quantities of the stuff they want with them (because added weight is expensive) and I'm sure they hoard it and someone's job is to make sure Mike isn't going to go on a killing spree because Chuck at his candy corn.

God damn you Chuck, you're stuck on a tin can in space with the dude. Leave his food alone. 

But I digress (freaking Chuck). What would they have to promise you, to get you into space? What food could we tempt you with, when it's time to run to the stars. Mac and cheese? A full turkey dinner in pill form? Spam and Pineapple Tang? 

I think I might take any of those over the weird gravy-packet things they use now. 

I feel like I harp on world building on here. I tell you to watch out for the sheep, and remember that just because you're super fascinated about x doesn't mean the rest of us give a crap, and leave you long winding lists about blah blah blah.

But I don't ever talk about the good stuff, so today we're gonna try that. 

A friend and I were talking about Harry Potter this week, because her small human just hit book 7 and she was all excited because not only was the small human in for a rollercoaster of feels (and if small human is like me, feels and anger) they're also in for the joy of rereading. For getting to the end and seeing where all the pieces were that got leaked to us, bit by bit for ages. I promise, right now, if you are a Harry Potter fan you're thinking of at least one of these. 

Last weekend I watched John Wick--which totally aside holy crapballs you need to go watch that movie if you haven't yet because never has so much happened so perfectly over a dog--and there were so many tiny things. Things you could blink and you'd miss them, but that told you so much about the world you were temporarily inhabiting. 

And all of this was still just swirling around in my head, and then I'm looking at a blank blog page and it's Well Written Wednesday and...well. I had a headache with pictures. Sometimes I'm just as guilty as everybody else of focusing on the negatives of a thing and not the positives. So what are some positives of world building? 

A biggest one to me is what I call Rationality. I didn't have a German moment, I capitalized that on purpose. Literature people and writers and movie people all talk about suspension of disbelief, but very rarely--at least to my ears--do they talk about why that fails. At least not above "it was too fantastic, it didn't work" which is almost stupidly unhelpful. It's not enough to ask your audience to suspend disbelief, you have to give them something to believe in instead. You have to ground them in a universe will laws and backstory and minutia, even if you never tell them what every detail is. Rationality means your universe works within itself, and doesn't fall apart when you start looking past the front bits. 

The right details can give even the most ridiculous thing Rationality (now I'm capitalizing it just to be a butt). They can give the audience tie points so your big left-turn, full twist reveal in act three doesn't turn into a wall-banger. That's a good thing, your number one job as a writer is to avoid wall-banger territory. 

Strive for Rationality. Sure, you'll get other perks too. Permanence in the audience's mind, recidivism (JK Rowling is a freaking life-ruiner who makes me utterly loathe her characters, but I keep reading her books anyway). But at least if you can manage Rationality you won't fall utterly off the tracks and find your poor beloved literary-babies sliding down a wall to be forever muffled by a carpet of shame.


And come back Friday, where we'll talk about the possible future of packaged food! 

Wow, that sounded boring. Come back anyway. I'll try to make it interesting. 

Friends! I bring you glad tidings from the future! No longer must you go without liquor on your adventures hiking the Appalachian Trail naked with your Argentinan mistress! No longer must you forgo the joys of intoxication simply because they check your water at the stadium entrance! 
Behold, the bright and glorious future you have been promised! Tell your congressmen today that you object to their needless special interest politics that favors big business alcohol producers of new innovation. Get your own Palcohol today!

Okay, so I"m kind of being a shit. I'm not sure why I need powdered alcohol in my life...but I don't actually need anything resembling an iWatch either so clearly my need isn't what is driving most of the marketplace we live in. 

Still, I have one critique for the people behind Palcohol. It's totes cool bro, that sounds fun. But I think maybe the statement that the government doesn't like you because big alcohol doesn't like you is a little short sighted. Stop and think very carefully about your product and then tell me it's not just a skosh more dangerous than the big bottles of liquid stuff I can't sneak into a place in my pocket. Tell me honestly at least one of your developers hasn't gone "hm, I wonder what happens if I just eat the powder" and then gotten really sick. 

_____________________________

And in unrelated book news, I'm part of The Romance Review Anniversary Contest, starting today! 

So it's Friday, and we're going to talk about race in the future because I found a tie in and I'm super freaking proud of myself for that. 

(If you're about to point out it wasn't hard to find because duh then you can just shut it)

But first I want to say something about the weird foghorn effect of the internet. Wednesday I wrote a blog post about representation in media and how I'm basically a recovering racist and I'll probably spend the rest of my life that way. I actually sort of hope I spend the rest of my life that way, but that's a conversation for another time. 

Anyway, somewhere between my writing that and you reading this the internet has exploded because male YA writer made stupid (probably joking) comment about why he can't write girls. I think he might have said it and the explosion started before Wednesday, but I wasn't paying that close attention. But since it's on people's minds and my Wednesday post did sort of tie-in, I'm going to give you my two cents because it's my blog and I can. If you've heard enough about this and you're tired, feel free to skip down to the actual post. 

Books about boys who struggle with their sexuality and the world around them are important. They're not more important, but I don't actually think they're less either. Except maybe in that they're everywhere and gaining critical acclaim seems to be easier. If dude is living on #1 of my list from Wednesday and he'd like to stay there then good luck with that. 

But if he's not, and he'd like to learn and grow as a writer the entire universe exploding at him in incoherent girl-rage is probably not going to help. Now I'm not saying if you feel rageful you have to stop, or you have to give him space for his girl-erasure like it's a legitimate thing. I'm saying have you ever been screamed at by a person at the top of their lungs and responded positively to it? Because I haven't, and I'm generally pretty willing to admit I'm wrong, even when I look like a fool. 

And you could say that message needs to be imparted to the d-bags who send rape threats and death threats to feminists on twitter, but  frankly they're the equivalent of poo throwing monkeys, and if logic was steering that train we wouldn't be having that conversation in the first place. 

So. Anyway. Now that I got all that out, let's talk about something else I promise not to make all angsty and negative. 

Alright. First you get a really cool human biology lesson. 

Once upon a time Kentucky was what I like to call the Ass End of the Universe. Meaning there were people, but there were no roads and a chunk of it's in the mountains. This means, strangely enough, before motor cars people didn't move much. You were born in a place, you grew up, you married somebody who was probably at least loosely related to you, and then you had babies who just repeated the cycle again. 

Now, if you know anything about genetics that makes you twitch a little because a population with no genetic diversity over a large period of time winds up with...you know, problems. 

Like the Fugate family in Kentucky who literally turned blue. Like their skin was actually blue. I looked for a picture I could add on here, but there wasn't anything that I felt comfortable pirating, so go to Google and type in Fugate Family. I'll wait. 

Freaking crazy, huh? I'll save you the giant science quotient. If you're interested you can check out this article from Wikipedia. The short answer is they were all descended from the same dude who carried a rare recessive trait that, when bred again and again into the population resulted in their blood turning brown and making their skin blue. 

Human geographic/genetic tie-ins make for strange, strange strangeness.

A lot of anthropologists and biologists theorize that part of the reason we seem to be getting a little hardier as a species, as time goes, is our increasing genetic diversity.  People move away from where they were born and marry new people with completely different genetics and that means X genetic disorder has a much lower chance of happening. Which is good obviously. 

But it also means a certain homogenization of the populace. Like right now, scientists figure eventually we'll all look like mixed-race Brazilians in the future. And hey, if the guy they used in the picture on that article is anything to go by, it could be a lot worse. It's already happening too. In the last hundred years there are a whole run of things that've gotten less common just here in the US. Things like actual blue eyes (someday we'll talk about how your eyes get their color, if we haven't already, because weird).

So what does that mean for your space opera set in the year 6000? 

Well, that geographical component is something I think they're not taking enough into account. When we plan for exodus I can't really see certain people getting on ships together, so you're likely to backslide. But then as you're backsliding your environment has changed so much. If dark skin is supposed to be a genetic mutation to protect from increased UV exposure around the equator, what does that do in space over a couple dozen generations of living in a serious UV shielded space-ship? 

And then if we get out there, into the black, and there are aliens around that means new diseases and probably new genetics (because tentacle porn is a thing and I'm sorry, you can't convince me nobody would be up for that irl).

But the big question is this: Does writing an entire universe of homogenized white-ish people make you racist or just lazy?

Option A says racist, because you've intentionally erased all the people of color from any sort of bearing or agency on your concept of our future as a species. Even if you did it unintentionally (I'll own up to this. It's a thing and I'm working on it) they're still gone. 

Option B says lazy, because it's easier that way and then you can just talk about trade negotiations with the bean people of Sigma 4 and tentacle alien sex, which is what we're all here for anyway. 

Option C says you're neither. You've bought into the research and you're going to tell us where all that diversity went and how we feel about the fact that it's gone. But, you know, that's a lot of research, and if you pull that off without some serious world-builders disease I will fall at your feet and grovel. 

Option D says you reject the entire question. You're not writing a universe filled with white-ish people, you're writing a universe filled with people and some of them are white and Christian, and some of them are purple and worship rubber bands, and some of them are brown and blare space-mosque calls to prayer onto the feed every morning at the exact same time.

So tell me which book you'd rather read. 


And come back Monday where we start the whole cycle over again. And hey, if you've got a suggestion for Miscellaneous Monday leave it in the box. I'm clearly scraping the bottom of the barrel. 

I'm trying not to be an utter failure at blog posts this week, but it's kind of a stretch. 

A, because the last few weeks on here have been all about short fiction, and that was a direction that got decided for me by someone else. You have no idea how much easier that is. And B, my book just came out in print and simultaneously a bunch of other commitments in my life popped up and made it hard to get away from my email long enough to accomplish anything. 

Anyway, that's enough excuses, let's get to why we're all here today. Also, I'm possibly not as sorry as I should be for how uncomfortable today's topic is going to be for everyone. 

So. I try not to bang on about the slush pile because of reasons (we deal with a lot of baby writers/I sound like I'm whining/I'm whining) and also because it gets boring for everyone. But it's Wednesday and that means we're supposed to talk about writing today.

Internation Women's Day was earlier this week, and last month was Black History Month, so there have been a lot of people talking about representation. Not just because of those things, obviously. The corner of the interwebs I live in spends a lot of time talking about representation. About eighty percent of that conversation is about the representation of women in media, and then the other twenty seems to be about people of color. 

And today I'm going to tell you a story that possibly makes me sound like a privileged idiot and then you get another 5 Ways Not to Suck list. You're welcome. 

I grew up in a small, fairly monochromatic town. As of the 2010 census it was 90% white. I can remember precisely four people in my hometown who weren't either white or black. Just let that sink in for a minute.

Now I'm not going to spin you some grand story about how racist it was, and my experiences with the local Klan and... First of all, I'd be the worst person in the universe to do any of that around because everybody in town knew my parents and I can't imagine the fallout of someone being overtly racist around me. My dad is that kind of person who is quiet and unbelievably scarier for that fact. When I was properly little he worked at the newspaper, and when I was older he worked at the community college, and I don't think anybody at either place would have been at all confused about his stance on race. 

And second, the large majority of the racism I was exposed to was the institutionalized, quiet kind. I grew up the child of liberal parents in a seriously conservative place. Everything I heard from every teacher my entire childhood was about how racism was wrong and people were just people and everyone had value. Except poor people on welfare or rich people.

But everything I knew about people who weren't white came from media. 

Sure, there were non-white kids in my class. About ten percent, obviously. There were kids who turned out to be gay (heheh, after we left town). And I was friends with a few of them, even when we were really young. I suspect their experiences were vastly different than mine. I remember, clearly, the way people reacted to the kids of color who didn't...do all the right things. 

But if you ask me to picture an Asian family I knew before I started college the best I can do is either The Joy Luck Club or Lethal Weapon 4. Most of my understanding of the reality of race in America comes from Maya Angelou and Zora Neal Hurston. I never heard anything disparaging about Native Americans and I still inherently have a hard time understanding why that's a thing. 

There were situations I didn't realize were a factor of that inherent bigotry until I was well past them. Most of high school people asked me quietly shitty questions about whether or not several of my friends were gay, and I never gave that the weight it should have. A religious official gave me the most poisonous response to a volunteer request you could imagine, and I shrugged my shoulders and accepted it. A close friend got in serious trouble with the law and wound up on the sex offender registry for a thing that was ridiculously super common because he was mixed race and his girlfriend was white.

I don't know if this next bit was all my dad, but I suspect it kind of was. Someone had to remind a small town desperate for some kind of claim to fame that we had a former resident who'd gone on to become Hollywood's first major black director, won a Spingarn Medal from the NAACP in 1972, and a National Medal of Arts in 1988. I'm not going to say a lot about Gordon Parks because I degenerate into rage filled noises and angry eyebrows really quickly, but I met him once. I've never seen a famous person so uncomfortable in a room full of white people. But he shook my hand and said "Your dad is a real special guy." 

So, having said all that, now we get to the uncomfortable part. I try to be honest on here, even when it's not necessarily flattering.

With all the talk in the world about representation and the way people express opinions everywhere I hear/see/read a lot of "I'm not racist." I never say it, because I am.  Am I as racist as I was at twelve and I'd somehow picked up the idea people of color in cities just didn't try hard enough? Thank f*ck, no. How about eighteen, when I thought race wasn't a thing and only democrats complained about it? No again, thankfully. Twenty-five, when I bought the prevailing opinion around me that the Civil War was about so much more than slavery and the southern dependence on owning other people was legitimate? 

Some days literally every time I open my mouth I have to check myself. Because there's a line somewhere between my freedom of expression and someone else's right to not be reminded the world hates them, and I'm never sure where it is. Now, at thirty-something, I seem to be inclined to put it on their side. I've got no clue what'll happen in another ten years.

So, back around to what started all this. Representation in fiction and why it's important. 

If you ask me to close my eyes and picture a Native American, I see an old woman struggling to tell a story about what life was like on the prairie before the white people showed up. She'd proud and she's funny and she's lived a full life of really amazing experiences. An African American? It's a girl struggling through the utter shitbag that is her life and trying to find something positive to hold on to because she can and she deserves to be happy. The most powerful, most lasting representations are the ones that come from people telling their own stories, even if that's through a lens of fiction.

BUT...that's no excuse not to try. Just because it's hard and it makes you uncomfortable is no reason to populate your fictional universe with white people.  

With that in mind, we're moving on to the next bit (and I am sorry about how long this post is turning out to be).

Way #1: Just Don't. 
If you still exist in a place internally where you can't describe a minority.marginalized person of any stripe to me, as a character, without making them a walking stereotype then... Well. A) feel free to walk away from this and I give you permission to write all about you. And B) just, you know, um... Not to be mean but I'm not really interested in reading it. Have a nice day. 

Way #2: Think Before You Speak.
If the reverse of whatever you're about to say would insult the piss out of you, you should probably think about that. I was taught a standard rule for this in college. If you wouldn't say it to an actual person's face, or you would feel the need to start your comment with "I'm not racist, but" then you're going to be racist and insulting. 

Way #3: Research.
I know, it's hard sometimes. But here's the thing. A lot of minority culture, in the US and also I suspect everywhere else in the world, get's sort of...skipped in your general schooling. So, if you've got a character who's black there's a very real chance the Harlem Renaissance had an even larger impact on their life than it does on yours. 

If I've said that and you don't realize the Harlem Renaissance had an impact on your life then I have to wonder if you've ever been to a dance hall or had a cocktail or lamented the fact you couldn't buy booze on a Sunday in the midwest. History is a strange twisty creature, and that should never be underestimated.

Way #4: Say it With Me, People are People are People.
In a very real way the same things that motivate you--yes you, right now, whoever you are--motivated literally every other sentient being that has ever or will ever exist. Sure, the externals can be different. The ways we respond to those motivations generally are different. But I promise you there was at least one sixteen-year-old girl in Rome in 160 AD who just really wanted the guy selling fruit down the block to like her. There was at least one twelve-year-old boy living in a slave cabin in Georgia in 1845 a little confused about why he found Joseph next door so attractive. 

There was equally the utter flipside of that. A sixteen-year-old girl on baby number 3 and husband number 2, and a twelve-year-old boy who couldn't conceive of not being a slave, and both as contented with that situation as they'd been trained to be. 

Way #5: Accept That Failure is a Learning Experience.
Inevitably, in the course of pulling up your underoos and getting into the guts of telling a story about people that aren't you, you're going to f it up. You're going to mishandle something, or have to spend a lot of time explaining why John calls X people X name because he's a bigot. (Or conversely, John is not a bigot, John is a human being in 1890 and that was the term literally every white person used. You'll still have to explain it.) 

You should have to explain it. If you're not ready to explain it go back up to #1 and have a good hard think. And even when it's uncomfortable, think about the things people are telling you.  More and more I'm convinced, as a society, that we learn not to be shitheads because people tell us not to be shitheads. 

Remember, it might have taken Brazil until 1890 (or 1888, depending on who you ask), but everyone made it on the Slavery Is Bad train. 




OKay. That's enough out of me today. Come back Friday and I'll come up with some kind of linked post that for this. Or, you know, suggest something. That'd be nice too. 

Slight Edit: So I was going back through here and I reread this post and realized when I told you about those awesome books I probably should have told you the title, and not just assumed you'd know them. The Native American book I referenced is Pretty Sheild: Medicine Woman of the Crow and the other was Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

Week four here we come!  This has been a crazy ride, and I loved all the weeks but this one, I think. I liked a lot of the stories for this week, but endings are hard. 

So, I picked up Time Warp. Part 1 by Lauren Greene, part 2 by Simon, and part 3 by CJ are in green and divided by ****.  

It was a day like any other. She had come down the stairs, her phone was ringing, and she stopped to answer it, realizing her pump had slipped halfway off. She put her hand against the building, and leaned in, pulling the pump over her heel. She caught herself looking at a bearded man, sitting in the park, reading a newspaper. Her eyes looked him up and down.

On a hunch, she crossed the road to the park, not even looking for taxi cabs, even though she knew they wouldn’t stop. She’d read just the other day about a kid who had been hit, holding hands with his father. She didn’t know why she was headed to the park. She should have turned right and walked the length of the street, on the way to Barnes Butler to drop off the package. But there was something vaguely familiar she saw in the man.

When she had crossed, she stopped and she stared at the back of his head, silently daring him to turn around. He was engrossed in the newspaper, and she thought maybe she should just turn and leave. Instead, she barreled forward as if driven by a motor and stood in front of him, like a tree, blocking his reading light. He shook the paper and tilted his eyes up towards her. His face twitched in instant recognition, but it was too late for him to go anywhere.

“I thought that was you,” she said.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“I work across the street.”

She sat down next to him, and he folded up the paper and sat it on his knee. He gave her a sidelong look as she stared at the print on the paper and gingerly picked it up with her thumb and index finger. “You know if you’re going to sit here on a bench in Central Park in the middle of New York City, the least you could do is buy a newspaper dated for today. March 4, 1972, really Henry?”

“I take it there’s nothing in that manila envelope I need to be worried about. It doesn’t look thick enough to carry a gun.”

“What do they say these days?” she asked, raising her eyebrows at him. “Take a chill pill?”

“Yes, I think that’s correct. I’ll tell you the English language is not what it used to be.”

"You’re not my target this time.”

“Who is?”

“That’s privileged information, and you know it.”

“So how come you can’t kill me now, but in 2150 I’m your mortal enemy?”

She shrugged, clutching the package in her hand, and looking from side to side to make sure no one had followed her. He put his hand down on the bench, and he moved it over towards her skirt, but her reflexes were quick and she slapped it away. It pained her too, because she’d always found him attractive, even with a target on his head. But this wasn’t one of those spy movies where the two people fell in love and forgot all about the price on their head. She knew she’d have to target Henry next time they warped, and she didn’t want to risk unnecessary emotions becoming involved. She had never been here, to this time, and it was a surprise to see him. He looked innocent and younger than the last time she’d seen him. Of course then, his hands had been gripping the side of the building and she had been just about to peel them off one by one. She had imagined the scene as he dropped the fifty stories to the ground. She could even hear the splat his body would have made against the pavement, but in that exact moment in time she had warped.

The next assignment had not been a good one either, because it had occurred during the war, and it had taken much longer than she expected. Blue versus Gray, and she had been a housewife. She thought to herself that she should have never taken this job. She had no roots. Babies born and abandoned. But here she was, still at the hands of the powers to be. “I could help you,” he said.

“And why would you do that?”

“Because you didn’t kill me last time.”

Ha, she thought to herself. Only because there was a glitch in the machine. “I tried to.”

“Have you thought that maybe the orders have changed?”

She looked him in the eyes. She felt like she could trust him, but she didn’t know why. Her mind jumped to the moment in time where he was about to fall to his death. His eyes had looked sincere and warm, and in that moment she had felt a twinge of guilt. She never felt that way. It was always just business to her, never guilt.

“And why would they have changed?”

“Ophelia, we’re working for different people who have the same objective, aren’t we?”

She nodded, because she knew he was right. She looked down at her watch, the second hand spinning fast, and she felt the familiar wave come over her. No, not now, she thought. She couldn’t warp now. She grabbed the park bench, her grip tightened against the wood, as if she could save herself from traveling through space and time.

“What is it?” he asked.

“I think it’s coming. The warp.”

He shook his head. “That’s impossible. You haven’t done your job yet.”

“And how do you know what my job is?” she asked.

“That’s simple,” he said. “Our groups, they’ve—“

But the words were gone, in a swirling whirlwind, because in that moment her body was disassembling into millions of tiny particles, atoms, quarks, and it was traveling through a funnel towards another time period. 


*************************************


Re-materialising was unpleasant. There’s no other way to put it.

Hundreds of hours of training. Thousands of real-time warps, some of them across vast distances and durations. Rational thought. Mental preparation. Will. None of it really did much to take the edge off the sensation of having your body smashed to its component parts and swapped with identical ones somewhere, and somewhen, else.

Though it was supposed to be instantaneous - at least to to the five pitifully dull human senses - operatives often spoke about an almost imperceptible moment as they came out of a warp, a moment that passed in a fraction of a heartbeat. A brief, excruciating instant where the consciousness was present, but the body was not. They called it the Void, and it was terrifying.

Ophelia came around screaming, certain she could feel every tiny layer of skin being drawn to her bones like filings to a magnet. Someone put a hand over mouth, another on her back and lowered her gently to the floor. Her memory kicked in, then her hearing. Someone was speaking, softly, reassuringly.

"Phe. Phe, I’m sorry, there’s so little time. It’s OK, Phe. It’s OK." A hand on her forehead. "I had to pull you. I’m sorry. No time." It was Isaac, the warp tech. His pale, boyish features were shot through with guilt or concern or both. Ophelia focused and let him guide her back to her feet, doing most of the work as his slight frame struggled to support hers. She calmed as recognition of her surroundings flooded over her. The two of them now stood in a debriefing chamber under the clinical glare of three perfectly spaced strips of LED’s. The chambers were designed to be identical, from the dimensions and the furniture down to the shade of high-gloss grey that covered the walls, ceilings and doors. There were hundreds of them scattered across six continents, hidden in office buildings and disused railway stations and specialist bunkers. She could’ve been anywhere in the world.

"Zac, what’s going on?" Ophelia asked, scanning Zac’s face for clues. "I haven’t made the drop. The target’s still out there somewhere - I didn’t finish the job."

Now she’d a chance to look at him properly, she could see Zac was haggard. Tiredness dragged at his cheeks and brow, and his usually alert and inquisitive eyes were watery and ringed with black. His once-white shirt and coat were stained with old sweat.

"There’s not much time to explain, Phe," said Zac, busying around her. "I’m setting you up to go back straight away." He pulled the watch from her wrist and replaced it with another, identical one. "Things have changed. Bad changed." He met Ophelia’s gaze and held it, and it took a moment for her to realise he was holding out a hand for the envelope. The one she’d been clasping all this time. She handed it over.

"What do you mean, changed?" Henry had hinted at that, too. What had he meant? Had he known she was going to be here, now?

"Zac, Henry was back there. I was talking to him when you pulled me."

"Henry?" He handed her another envelope, indistinguishable from the first. "In NYC04? Henry, as in - "

"Yeah, that Henry."

"And you spoke with him?"

"Sure, he was sat on a bench in the middle of Central Park, reading a paper. I had to be sure it was him."

Zac ceased his fussing and took a step back. His expression had been grim before; now, hopelessness was starting to show. He rubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Damn, Phe. Things are worse than I thought. We need to get you back to where you were and pronto.”

"What the hell is going on?" said Ophelia, irritated now. "You’re sending me back to the exact same time and place? For what? What’s changed? I - "

Ophelia’s breath caught. The room was shaking violently, the tortured screech of twisting metal drowning out her words. Zac stumbled, about to fall, and she pulled him quickly upright with a hand under his armpit.

The tremors stopped a few moments later. Ophelia thought she could hear muffled voices in the distance.

Zac swore under his breath. “Phe, I’m heading straight over to control. In a couple of minutes you’re going to warp back to NYC.” He walked to the door of the chamber and produced a key fob from his pocket, which he held up to a small panel mounted on the wall before throwing to her.

"Lock the door behind me. If you’re not in Central Park in five minutes from the point I leave you, get out of here and stay low. Left out of this door, straight on and up until you see daylight."

"What am I supposed to do in New York?"

"Make the drop. Deliver the package - the one I just gave you. Same place. If you make it, your watch will bring you home."

"What about my target? The briefing said letting him walk would be catastrophic."

Another tremor rocked the room, throwing the door open. Zac shut it hurriedly, covering it with his back. His eyes were wide and fearful.

"Everything’s changed. There’s a new target. They know I’ve pulled you and they’re coming. They know you’re here. I have to get to control. Now."

Ophelia crossed the room and put a hand to Zac’s cheek. His expression hardened, but she could see he was shaking. He looked exhausted. “What are you going to do?”

"Get you into warp. That’s all that matters. The only way to fix this is you."

Zac turned and opened the door, taking great care to check both ways before stepping into the corridor outside. “Good luck, Phe. Get ready to lock the door.”

"Wait, Zac - who is the new target?"

Zac smiled. “Isn’t it obvious?”

He started off down the corridor. Ophelia watched him go, her hand resting on the doorknob.

Over his shoulder, Zac called: “You.” 


******************************************

Rematerialising was bad. Twice in under fifteen minutes was testing the limits of Ophelia’s resolve. She threw up in the nearest garbage can and looked around. Central Park was fairly empty this morning, but a few joggers gave her dirty looks as they went by.

She tucked the package under her arm and scanned the benches. No sign of Henry. It didn’t make sense. If this was the same time and place, he should be here.

Ophelia took the path out of the park and headed for Barnes Butler. At the first light, she made the mistake of looking behind her.

They were almost blending in. But she was trained on the right clothing and accessories for almost every time and place in history. The hats were wrong. She made eye contact with the shorter man. He stopped, grabbing his companion and they spun away into the park.

She moved faster up 5th Avenue. They would be back. Ophelia tried to remember the paths in and out of Central Park. If she could get clear before they came out, she’d have a better chance of reaching the store in time to make her original drop.

As she passed the convenience store, someone grabbed her arm. She went for her gun, forgetting they didn’t exist in this time period so she hadn’t been allowed to bring it.

“Henry!” She snapped, recognising the beard before she fully saw his face. Her heart pounded a little less. “I thought you were those guys.”

“I know. They showed up just after you vanished. I saw them looking around and leaving when it was clear you warped. They must not have gone far.” He gestured towards the package. “I think they’re here to stop you leaving that.”

“Well, my assignment hasn’t changed.” She swallowed, uncomfortable about the idea of who her target was.

“No, I got that.” He looked outside of the shop and nodded. “Come on, it’s safe.” Ophelia hesitated to follow him. They were still on opposite sides. He rolled his eyes and pulled her by the hand. “Come on, I’m not trying to set you up.”

He walked close to her, keeping one hand against her back. It was almost protective and she hid a smile. On days like this it was easy to forget they were at war.

"Are you planning to escort me all the way there?" She joked. He nodded, tight-lipped.

"I told you, things have changed. They're not going to like that you're back."

Ophelia scanned the glimpses of the park over the fence. "I can't see anyone. Maybe they didn't expect to get made and they've left." She and Henry looked at each other. Ophelia laughed. "I know, I know. But a girl can dream of the easy life."

They covered the three blocks to the store, moving at a fast pace. She preferred this. It was almost too fast to talk.

"There it is."

"Stay with me." He held her arm tighter. She tensed but she wasn't sure if Henry was the one triggering her feeling of unease.

Ophelia had the familiar sense that something wasn't right. Everything had happened so fast that she hadn't had a chance to sit down and work out which piece of information didn't fit.

"It's right there." She scanned the streets, but the light had changed and everyone was stopped. "I have to get this done."

Ophelia pulled her arm away from Henry and ran out into the street. She was halfway across the road when he yelled to her. The words vanished behind the blare of horns.

She didn't see the black town car accelerate through the red.

The driver's side clipped her. Ophelia flew into the air, coming down hard on the car’s hood. Pain sparked through her hip and up her side. The car wasn’t slowing down. She rolled, sliding off the side of the hood and onto the pavement. She didn’t want to move. A taxi skidded to a halt beside her, and soon a stranger was helping Ophelia stand. She limped forward, her left knee turning purple as it swelled.

Ophelia looked around. Henry was gone. She didn’t know if that meant he had finished his assignment. If he’d been here to kill her, he hadn’t done a good job. Neither had the other two men and the idea they might have unfinished business pushed her to keep going.

She brushed aside offers of rides to the hospital and looked around for the manila envelope. Heart starting to race in panic, she dropped to her knees, ignoring the pain. It had slid under a parked car. She wriggled under on her stomach to pull it out and stood. She saw the town car turning onto the street. She was right; they'd circled to check she was dead.

“I have to go.” She pushed through the crowd of onlookers, the envelope clutched in her hand. Each step sent bolts of blackout pain up her spine and into her head. No one could say she wasn’t dedicated to her job.

She entered the store and approached the counter. “Hi, I have a package to drop off for someone?”

A sales associate took it, looking at the name. “Oh yes, my manager. She’s just in the back. I’ll leave it here for her.” She did a great job pretending Ophelia wasn't covered in scratches with ripped clothing.

Ophelia nodded her thanks. A wave overtook her. Combined with her injuries, it was enough to make her swoon and grab the counter for support. She glanced at her watch. The warp was coming.

“Oh, Ms. Dell. This is for you.” A shadow loomed over the counter and the sales associate handed the envelope to someone beside Ophelia.

Ophelia looked up. Her eyes widened. The room started to blur. This didn’t make sense but suddenly she knew what was wrong. As the whirlwind overtook her, she scrambled to undo the clasp on her watch. She couldn’t go back.


*****************************************



Rematerializing twice in fifteen minutes had been pushing it.

Dematerializing halfway and then stopping the process was like being ripped apart, twisted sideways, and then slammed back together by a reckless giant that wasn’t really committed to the process. Before her time they used to make the kids in training do it, once, just so the understood why they never wanted to do it again. If you could find someone who’d survived the job long enough to have been through that training they didn’t remember it pleasantly.

There was screaming, someone burst through the door and yelled for everyone to get down. Phe lay on the floor and tried not to cough up her internal organs. Someone rolled her over on her back, checking her pulse. Henry, her brain offered, grudgingly trying to start moving again. He smiled at her, and pressed an injector to her arm.

“Are you sure about this?” someone asked from behind them.

“Just watch the door.”

She blinked, bleary, as her body started to mend itself as well as it could. Boosters were powerful enough to deal with being hit by a car or a stopped warp, but asking one to manage both was a little much.

Henry jumped over the counter and took the envelope from the unsuspecting woman, staring at her in horror. “Excuse me Miss…” He knelt down, and there were a small series of beeps, and the sound of a safe door opening. She heard rustling, and then it slammed shut and Henry was herding the women from behind the counter and making sure there was no one else in the office.

“You’d all like to be over here. In fact, why don’t you go on outside and tell people there was a fire and we’ve evacuated the building.” He smiled charmingly, and his associate in black ushered them out the door.

He popped back in immediately. “Come on, Henry.”

“Coming.” He knelt before her, eyes sad and warm. “Can you move yet?”

Phe gingerly sat up, and took his hand when he offered to help. “What…”

“You, my dear, have been burned.”

“They don’t do that anymore,” she answered by wrote.

Henry cocked a brow at her. “They also don’t kidnap people from the past and put them through training anymore.”

She swallowed, her stomach rolling.

Back in the dark ages, when the agency first started, they’d run like any other spy agency. If an agent outlived their usefulness, or turned, they put out a burn notice and it was open season. If they found someone with the genetic proclivities to hand warping, they scooped them up and used them.

“That was me,” Phe said softly.

Henry linked their arms, and strolled out onto the street. The booster had managed to make her knee move right, so they weren’t too conspicuous. He walked her north, away from Central Park. They’d made it about a block when it all came crashing back, through the shock of the fact they’d just asked her to deliver an explosive to herself, in the past.

“The agents…”

“Wilson will deal with them,” Henry assured. “He’s good at that.”

“Where was he last time?”

“I told him to hold off.” Henry pushed through the door of a small, Russian café down a quiet side alley.

It was dark, and quiet. The man behind the counter took one look at Henry and locked the door and walked back into the kitchen. Phe stopped, and tried to pull away from him.

“Easy…” He gently guided her to a booth. “Sit. I’ll make us some tea.”

“What…I don’t want tea. I want to know what the hell is going on!”

“You know what’s going on.”

“No, I don’t.” She clenched her hands, and counted backwards from ten. “I haven’t done anything. Why would they burn me?”

He walked back over with an elaborate silver tea service and two elegant, fine stripped blue tea cups. He sat down with a heavy sigh. “Would you like to be mother?”

Her lip curled. “Are you sixty?”

He laughed softly. “Maybe someday.” He poured them tea and handed her the sugar. “It’s my fault.”

Phe wondered whether or not he’d notice if she grabbed one of the fine silver spoons and slid it into her lap. Henry stirred his tea, deep in thought, before he dolloped a bit of milk into hers, and a sugar lump.

“I had a job here about...um…well, I suppose you understand my difficulties with time.”

She snorted. It was always hard to figure out what was going on with your personal timeline. That was one thing nobody ever mentioned in training, and nobody told you how to manage it.

“In any case, I had a job here. Simple thing, the details don’t matter.” He shrugged. “Do you remember the first time we met, Ophelia?”

“Define first.”

He smiled, nodding. “To us.”

“Warp Control.” He’d been part of some delegation from ‘the enemy’ and she’d been in the front with the recruits giving one of them a what-for because of their shoddy ethics.

“Indeed.” He took a sip of his tea. “Shortly after that I had a job here, a long one that was more than just a simple drop and flash.” He looked up at her and watched her for a long minute. “And by chance I happened to be passing the shipping store as you…as she was going to lunch.”

Her fingers tightened on the edge of the table. “And you reported it.”

“Yes. Well, I surreptitiously took a DNA sample first, but yes.”

Phe reached out and grabbed the fragile teacup, draining half of it in one go. Henry silently refilled it and pushed the sugar bowl toward her. It should have been a shock. It should have been utterly incomprehensible that the company she’d spent the last decade with would ever…

Never trust anyone who tells you they’re clean. Richards, in first-year tactics, had been grizzled and negative and goddamn paranoid. But every time he’d said that in class he’d been looking at her.

“What do I do now?” Phe swallowed, and looked up at kind-eyed Henry, who’d just saved her life twice over in one go.

“That, my girl, depends entirely on you. If you want out I have contacts.”

She swallowed, and finished her tea. “And if I don’t want out?”

Henry smiled, slow and predatory. “I have contacts for that too.”

 

I have utterly no clue what he meant by that, but we can all nod at it and pretend we understand the cultural significance of the thing.

So. My February felt like a bust. On the goals level it certainly was. I didn't read a book, either for review or for me (it's possible I am a lying liar who lies and I just don't remember that I read a book this month), I didn't finish Strange Travels book 2. Honestly, I'm not even sure I opened the file in February. I utterly whiffed a couple of weeks of blogging.

I did manage to make my monthly goal for GYWO. Also, I managed a full layout/edit combo on Kate's book, and Codes-- which should be live for pre-orders soonish, and I'm about a third of the way done with my book which should be live and ready to meet the world soonish too.  Also, I made bookmarks for AwesomeCon. Not enough, but there were a few made. Progress is progress.

So, plans for March:
1) I need to actually do a blog tour. We keep starting to plan one and then it doesn't happen. But this spring is going to be big for Golden Fleece Press and we really should get on that. 
2) I will work on Strange Travels 2. I might need to be glued to the chair.
3) Finish edits of doom, and marketing, and ads, and cover splashes and...yeah. 

GERONIMO!