Andi's Published

Andi is complete, at 90,440 words.

I was going to go directly with Amazon, but instead I published with Smashwords again. The process is simpler, though the EPUB check is aggravating. The things it finds are the things you have a hard time noticing when writing in Open Office (or in MS Word), like empty blockquotes.

This was a hard book to write, given the gamy subject matter, but I do find the characters likable. I always base my characters on people I've known and liked, just putting them into situations they've never been in.

The books are also coming together better as a series, though I'm going to have to do some serious timelining. I want to use Amazon or maybe Lulu for print versions of all the books, and market them in Jim Thorpe. They'd make nice souvenirs, except maybe for Dolly, but I could market her and maybe the Ben and Lenie book if I ever finish it in Mineral Wells. All I have to do is get off my butt and do it.

For relaxation, I've been watching movies and reading. Arrival (2016) was good. It raises the idea of non-sequential time, which is interesting. In Andi, I suggested that very idea to account for the fact that it didn't take ten years for them to travel ten years into the past, though I lean more toward time stored kind of squished up, like an accordion. That way she can just hop from peak to peak or trough to trough (there wouldn't be an "up" or "down.")

I'm reading Sabatini again, most recently The Lion's Skin. It's one of my three favorites--that and Saint Martin's Summer and Mistress Wilding. That's probably because I'm a romantic at heart.

Andi's First Draft

Andi's draft is somehow complete, currently around 86,000 words, probably to top out around 90,000. Now I'm going through the tedious part, reading it and re-reading it, until I'm sick of looking at it, tying up loose ends, fixing wording, smoothing the flow. It's basically in three parts:

• In Part One the long lost lovers are reunited. The multiverse is an idea that's discussed, but neither party really believes in it.
• In Part Two the honeymooners realize that multiverses are real, and that Andi has the talent for traveling between them.
• In Part Three Andi knows how it's done and and the newlyweds do it. 

When I started out on it, the parallel universe thing was kind of a throw-away. Then the more I wrote, the more central to the resolution of Andi's problem it became. Funny how that works.

I didn't set out to write a science fiction novel; I set out to write a novel about human trafficking, using the Rotherham scandal as my model. There is lots of material available on Rotherham, and on human trafficking in general, MS-13 and similar gangs in particular. It's really pretty seedy subject matter. I've tried to explore the effects of going through an ordeal like that on an intelligent young woman.

I did have a lot of fun discussing parallel universes and time travel. Does the entire universe clone itself whenever there's a decision point anywhere? If a tree falls in the forest and no one notices, does a new universe still spin off? Will the luck of a fisherman on the Caspian Sea effect the world of a Manhattan socialite? How about something happening in the Lesser Magellanic clouds? In some galaxy that's so far away we can't see it? A single ovum getting fertilized presents millions of alternate chances, one for each spermatozoon, and there are a lot of critters breeding every day, including flies and rabbits.

Then there's the question of a law of conservation of matter, akin to the law of conservation of energy.

What would a person do if he seriously had to travel in time? How would he do it? Where does the money come from? Andi and Elliott only go back a dozen years, but the currency's changed within that time. How do you buy a car? How do you identify yourself to rent an apartment?

Details, details. I've addressed all of them I could think of, and I'll address more as I proof and rewrite, but I'm sure there will be some of them unaddressed when I'm done. The more I think on the problem, the more I'll notice.

Life in the World of IQ 60

Andi's story has reached 66,000 words and is (slowly) building toward the blow-off. It's decided to become very much a science fiction story, and I've tossed in a couple science fictiony jokes to amuse myself and any readers. In the course of all this, I've been to Texas for extended stays twice, had another hip replacement, and done a bunch of other things of a more personal nature. What with writer's block and not being able to properly feel my fingers, I'm surprised that I've gotten this far, given the unpleasant subject matter.

I've come to like Andi. She's smart and tough without (I think) being smart-assed or hard. We've all done stupid things at one time or another; hers were just dumber than most. My premise is that we all make our occasional trips into alternate universes that are so similar we don't really notice the difference. As I've seen it described in other science fiction, a new universe is created whenever there's a decision point reached. One time travel movie I've watched recently (I can't recall the name of it and can't find it browsing my collection) uses that as part of the time machine; the guy has to shoot himself to create the alternate universe where he... does whatever it is he does. I think I said to myself "this is dumb" and put a Clint Eastwood movie on.

What happens if the decision point is in the Lesser Magellanic Cloud somewhere? Does that effect us as well? Or is the effect localized. With, last I saw, 250 billion galaxies, with umpty two gazillion planets in each, many inhabited by some form of life, that represents a lot of binary choices every second of every day. I do have some fun discussion these ideas in the course of the setup.

Beyond whatever that other movie is, Mega Time Squad features time travel via an ancient Chinese bracelet that has what's apparently a battery-powered green lighted button. I'm not sure if it's about time travel--he's able to go ten minutes or so into the past--or if it's about life in a world populated by Three Stooges clones. John, the hero, or I suppose he's an antihero, looks like a skinny New Zealand version of Curly. At one point there are a half dozen versions of him in one place, trying to steal the money from a Chinese gang while being chased by the wily minions of his boss, Shelton. One version is stabbed, one has his throat cut, one has his head blown off by a shotgun, the original "John" doesn't die. John has an IQ of approximately sixty. His girlfriend is a little smarter. The minions are a little dumber. Shelton, the brains of the outfit, may make IQ 70.

As it happens, Andi and Elliott are currently in a similar situation, with four versions of Andi having flinched into the same parallel universe after a traffic accident involving one of the human traffickers from her youth. Andi and Elliott have a lot better understanding of cause and effect, and Elliott has a pretty good (I think) handle on quantum physics and research into the nature of reality. They're now setting up to rescue Jane, actually four Janes, one for each of their baseline universes. It's been fairly writing itself for the past few chapters, so maybe my muse is awake.