Category: Short Fiction

The novella referred to in the previous post is done and up for purchase or free to read on Amazon Kindle Unlimited.

Welcome to the New Jazz Age!

It’s the Roaring Twenties all over again — well — the 2120’s, that is. Where New York City has reverted to its Jazz Age roots of two centuries before. What’s missing? Prohibition, and gun control. What’s not missing? Tough guys, and the dames who (sometimes) love them. Gin joints. Speakeasies. Dance halls. The Social Register is still a thing, and the Beautiful People litter the society pages of the local hypernews sites.

Enter a typical gumshoe private detective — a member of that high society himself, yet a man who left society long ago for other pursuits. And his latest client, a rich young woman of leisure, who needs her new husband followed.

Throw in the recently-crowned queen of one of Chinatown’s tongs, a beautiful investment wizard from upstate, and a hundred million dollars in assets, and suddenly it’s all

On Account of a Dame

About a week ago I had a weird dream and I noted it in a particular place, this way:

So I was in New York City, attending a Masonic conference and a sci-fi convention in the same hotel. I was wearing a three-piece suit and was armed to the teeth. And then I woke up, puzzled that I was in New York but glad I’d had the foresight to arm myself if I was going to be anywhere near the city.

I think I need to stop taking Benadryl at night.

This may or may not have been a mistake, because a certain well-known SF author of my acquaintance then said:

D*MN it Fuzzy.

If you don’t write a noir-feel short starting that way

I’m going to come through the internet and make you

I was about to type “beat you” BUT I don’t want to piss off Sally

but that paragraph? GREAT VOICE.

Continue please.

Now.

Well, shit.

Thus was the genesis of the (currently) 8,000 word noir-ish epic I’m calling On Account of a Dame.  It’s an attempt to see if I can write a complete novella of between 10K and 20K words.  It’s about halfway done so apparently I can.  It even fits into my Timelines universe, so there.

And all of my other characters are yelling at me furiously because I am ignoring them.

So I always generate images before I start writing, and during the writing, because it helps me visualize the characters better.  Here are a few of the ones I’ve generated this time.  First, Tiffany Frelinghuysen Delafield — the titular Dame.

Next, the Tong Queen (for whom I haven’t yet imagined a name, but will have to, since she’s going to be on stage in a couple more paragraphs)…

Finally, our hero the detective.  Maybe.  I don’t like the way MidJ is generating his suits, this is the best one so far, and really the only one that looks like a real three-piece suit.

Oh, and his valet and, as he says, “Kato to [his] Green Hornet,” Gunther.

I have no real idea what I’ll do with this story, but I have to finish it first anyway.

Well, there are three things on the stove at the moment.

• I started writing The Clerics in the Kitchen, which is a Delaney story I hinted at in A Dragon in the Foie Gras.
• Then I started writing The Lion and the Logic, which is the next main series novel.
• Then I started getting an itch to write in Apocalyptic Japan again, and that caused me to start writing In the Cherry Blossom’s Shade, the sequel to An American in Iya.

And now they’re all just…simmering.  *insert crying face emoji here*

I think that not feeling well for about the past week is part of why that is, but we’ll see.

Indiana.

No, seriously…sigh.

Way back in September I published one of these “State of the Author” things in which I bemoaned the fact that I had five projects running through my head.  This is something in the way of an update on that post.

1. The Lion and The Darkness — this is the next novel in the mainstream Timelines series.  Got unstuck a while back, have 16 chapters finished and four or five to go.  I hope to finish and publish before LibertyCon 36 in June 2024.  (Actually I hope to finish and publish by the end of May, but I’m hedging.)

2. The Dragon’s Sister — Finished and published, e-book and soft cover.  October 10, 2023.

3. An American in Iya (working title) — this is a novel that follows The Tale of the Crane Princess in the Timelines Universe track.  It’s foreshadowed in Tale, at the very end.  This book is 10+ chapters in, and will likely be first of two following the exploits of (currently) 16-year-old Saori Rin Sumisu.  I do not intend to write yet another doorstop like The Cross-Time Kamaitachi (which really should have been two books), if I can help it.

4. The isekai light novel “Help! Truck-kun Won’t Leave Me Alone, No Matter What World I’m In!” hasn’t been touched in months; I don’t know if I’m actually going to complete it or not.

5. The novella/light novel All Precious Stones and Peoples is on hold until after the novel AFTER The Lion and The Darkness, which is supposed to be The Lion and The Logic.

So, bottom line, there’s one novel almost finished that’s been hanging fire since 2022, a novella/light novel finished last October, and another novel that might see the light of day by the end of 2024.  One light novel that may or may not be written, and another novella/light novel in the future to follow The Lion and The Logic.  *whew*