I was writing

So, successes.

I've been published by Tweet The Meat four times. Yay! Click the link to read the stuff.

My contributions to The Celestial Toybox , the magazine of The Doctor Who Appreciation Society, continue unabated. Next up is issue 375/6 which contains a piece I did on The Cartmel Masterplan. I forget the grand total of issues I've appeared in, but we're looking at half a dozen at least.

Today I completed a bit on the first appearance of The Daleks, revised it (it's lots better now, but bears little or no resemblance to the original).

I make progress with the whole "Time War" thing. I now have one piece revised and another piece in dire need of tweaking. I was always impressed and amused by the dialog between spaceships that happens in Iain M. Banks's "Culture" novels (particularly "Excession") and this resulted in an attempt to write a short story that appears entirely as recorded data. Here's an extract:

[REDACT: node creation parameters restricted to Level 4 and above. If you require access to this data please see your supervisor]
[REDACT: 1.7s placement and space/time data restricted to level 4 and above.]
[REDACT: 4s traffic shaping - non neccessary data]

Identities Present.
AnsharadLiTom77-(red)[1337LART]
ChellPhanAnnie12-(blue)[SomeAssemblyRequired]
PanTorPan-element-Tor-element-Tor[LikenessOfAFreshYoungMaid]

+/set Tom
+/set Chell
+/set Tor

Tom - it's good to be with you again.
Chell - hello tom! It's been a while.
Tor - =image: sunrise over a snowfield=
Tom - it's good to see you too, Tor. We have about 20 seconds here before you go out of range. Do you have anything to share with us?

=stream: 127y data=
Tor - =image: an empty plate, remnants of food and a wineglass with a red residue in the bottom=
Chell - I bet! Wow. That's nearly a whole month's data. You're lucky to be out as far as you are.
Tor - =image: a child's birthday party. several laughing infant humans are present=
Tom - what, all the time?
Chell - I've spotted something interesting here. Tor, the third and ninth packets show an anomalous trend. Can you confirm that for me?
Tor - [ABRIDGED: half a second's worth of astrophysical data related to gravity, depicted as several charts and graphics]
Tor - =image: Rodin's Thinker=
Tor - =image: lightbulb=
Tor - [ABRIDGED: 1/100th of a second further equations and graphics relating to astrophyiscal and cosmological theory]
Tom - well, that's just not very likely.

BOX

Tom - what was that?

++CARRIER LOST - [LikenessOfAFreshYoungMaid]++

Chell - whoa.
Tom - one moment

/locate [LikenessOfAFreshYoungMaid]
\terminus not found

Tom - that's absurd. Even if the ship was destroyed it would take seconds

/display elapsed time
\session open for 2.1 seconds

It needs a bit of work, but I'm essentially happy with it. Of course, it's the last story in the sequence and now I have to go back and write the middle two, and then the one that occurred to me as being quite a cool idea but wasn't part of the plan at all, and possibly the other one that I'm sort of kicking around in a semi-amused fashion.

Anyway, when they are done they will be pulled together as one volume (called something like "Collateral Damage: A Possible History of the Last Great Time War") and presented for download and enjoyment as an ebook. Or eNovella. Or whatever. Part one is already at close to 10k words, so obviously I'd like to finish it and see what happens next.

The plan, such as it is, would be to have this ebook and invite people to d/l it for free, read it, review it if they like and tell people about it. I'd be interested in seeing what people think.