Arts

WIPpet Wednesday: Initiation

Happy Wednesday! I’m so glad to be back in the writing game. I’m at the point in the story where I’m working on the intro to the two main POV characters, and then I’ll likely write out of order for a bit. I liked what I saw somewhere about cobbling together a frankendraft from all the random scenes. That’s about right for my half pantsing, half plotting style.

The picture at the top is my mood board for Colin. I’ll hopefully get a chance to create a few more of these over time. It’s summer vacation, I don’t have a current editing job, and I’m not really able to write for hours at a time. So I’m doing other creative projects.

Today’s snippet is Colin’s first patient at his new job. Don’t read this if you sympathy gag from reading about vomit. Also, although he isn’t named in this snippet, the child here appears as a minor character in one of the Faithfully Yours books. (This story begins in August 2007, if that helps connect the dots.)

WIPmath: 4/19/2019 = 4 + 1 + 9 = 14 sentences.

The frantic young mother to Colin’s left was panic-babbling about her toddler’s illness while Colin tried to wrangle the poor boy into a position to examine him. He was fussy, and his skin was warm to the touch.

“How long has he been sick?”

“Almost a week. I thought he was getting better, but then he started up again.” Her voice quavered.

At that exact moment, just as Colin was lifting the child’s shirt to listen to his chest, he projectile vomited. Colin didn’t step back in time to avoid having his plaid shirt and pressed khakis covered in what might’ve been undigested crackers. The boy began sobbing.

Despite the initial shock, Colin kept his tone calm and steady as he stepped closer again. “It’s okay,” he assured the boy—and his mother by extension. Peering at the child, Colin noticed what he hadn’t before being covered in bodily fluids. He turned to the mother. “When was the last time he had a wet diaper?”

Like what you read? Be sure to check out the other entries and add your own. Just post a bit of your WIP, connect it to the date, and link up with us. Many thanks to Emily Wrayburn for giving us this space. Happy reading and writing!

WIPpet Wednesday: Starting over

Books, Writing

Well, our family has made it to June—and almost the end of the school year—relatively unscathed. We’ve had some bumps and bruises, but we’re hanging in there. Though with final exams around the corner, maybe I shouldn’t speak too soon. (Yep, that’s my two in the photo, messing around as usual.)

It’s been forever since I posted one of these, but I’m happily back in the game with a new WIP! It even has a title, courtesy of my friends (and kid-approved, even though it’s not a YA): Have a Little Faith.

While this story is not officially part of the Faithfully Yours series, and doesn’t center on the characters from those books, it is set in the same place. So expect a few familiar faces to pop up from time to time. I promise to share snippets when that happens.

This novel is about two very different people and the long-term friendship developing between them. It’s not a romance, although if I stick with my outline, both of the MCs will get their share of love. Today, I’m sharing from the very beginning, when our shy young doctor begins his new job in the tiny town of Concordia, NY.

Check out the two location photos. The first one is Geneva, NY, but I chose it for the look of the small town street of shops. (I tried to find stock images of Watkins Glen, but they were all of auto racing!) The second is Eagle Cliff Falls, which is not too far from where the story is set. The creek into which these falls empty is the main inlet for Seneca Lake.

WIPmath: none, as this is a brand-new novel. These are the first 4 paragraphs.

The family medicine center was adjacent to a strip mall consisting of a laundromat, an ice cream parlor, a tattoo artist, a bakery, and a used game trading store. It was one of those places designed in the 1970s to look like a modern home, only the maze-like interior contained doctors’ or dentists’ examination rooms.

Colin stared up at it, his bag in hand, as in awe now of its unattractiveness as he had been when he interviewed. It was a welcome distraction from his nerves. It wasn’t as though he hadn’t been a real doctor before. The diploma and the two letters after his name assured him he was very much real. But this was his first solo flight, newly finished with his residency.

Here he was, in a small town on Seneca Lake. Picturesque, quaint, with both holdovers from eras gone by—like the house/office building—and some modern structures, like the school and his apartment complex. There was older lakefront property, perhaps original to the town, and neighborhoods so new they lacked mature trees. The stores in the strip mall looked like they could be decades old, while the shopping center on the south end must’ve been built in the previous five years.

Colin took a deep breath in and closed his eyes. The air smelled fresh, like damp earth and late summer flowers. Overhead, several different birds chirped their wake-up calls. A bumblebee lumbered past Colin’s thigh with a slow, lazy buzz. After living with the constant noise and traffic in New York, this was like ridding himself of a permanent tension headache.

Blog Tour: Tales from Ardulum by J.S. Fields

Books, Featured

About the Book

Title: Tales from Ardulum

Series: The Ardulum Series

Author: J. S. Fields

Publisher: Ninestar Press

Release Date: Monday, June 10 2019

Price: 5.99

Length: 56,500

Cover Artist: Natasha Snow. Interior illustrations by Micah Epstein

Genres: science fiction, space opera

Categories: lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, asexual, nonbinary, space battles, origin stories, space rouges

Warnings: fantasy space violence, moderate sexual content

Synopsis

One year after saving the Neek homeworld and redefining the people’s religion, the crew of the Scarlet Lucidity returns to the Charted Systems for a much-needed break. For Nicholas and Yorden, the Systems will always be home, but for Emn and Atalant, too many memories compound with Emn’s strange new illness to provide much relaxation.

TALES FROM ARDULUM continues the journey of Atalant, Emn, Yorden, Nicholas, and Salice as they try to define their place in a galaxy that no longer needs them while battling the artifacts of Ardulan colonization. Other stories include Yorden’s acquisition of the Mercy’s Pledge (and his grudge against the galaxy), Atalant’s exile from her homeworld, Ekimet and Savath’s romance, and many others.

Series Blurb

The ARDULUM series blends space opera and hard science into a story about two women persistently bound to their past, and a sentient planet determined to shape their future.

Purchase Links

Amazon US

Excerpt

“She is nothing, anymore,” the president responded. “She is Exile.”

“You can’t!” Neek burst towards the door just as it slammed closed. She rebounded and fell back to the floor, her tailbone taking the brunt of the fall. The ship’s engines began to whine, and the floor jostled as the craft left the surface.

Neek ran to the controls and slammed her hands on the stuk interface. Through the viewscreen, she saw capital buildings, the Ardulan Temple, and then treetops as the skiff left the city and moved to the suburbs. She tapped command after command into the computer, but each try brought an angry beep and no change in course. The ship was on autopilot and password locked. She had no control.

Neek swallowed, trying to ease the ache in her throat. Wherever they stashed her, she would find a comm. She would smuggle out handwritten messages if she had to. She wasn’t going to give up. That she had lost the robes, lost the Guard…she could mourn that in time. Saving the forests, that was her job. Helping her people move beyond Ardulum so they could truly participate in the Charted Systems, that was why she did all this, right? That she loved piloting was just a bonus.

Right?

A low tremble went through the ship. Neek had never felt a skiff do that before. Had she lucked out? Was it malfunctioning? Neek sent another query to the computer. The ship was…

Neek blinked. It couldn’t be.

The ship was going up.

Neek frantically queried the computer. The viewscreen still showed treetops, but that silo in the distance…that had been there the first time she’d looked. It had seemed closer for a while, but now, she realized as she squinted, it was far away again. She was watching a prerecorded loop!

“No!” The skiff was clearly going up. Neek’s ears were popping, and there was a funny feeling in her gut. Her planet’s skiffs were not designed to leave even the lower atmosphere. Only settees could do that, and this was no settee. Whatever the president’s engineers had done to make it spaceworthy, it hadn’t been nearly enough.

Neek threw commands at the computer. Land. Coast. Glide. STOP.Each returned with a ping and the perpetual image of treetops. He couldn’t do this. He had no right to do this! What in Ardulum’s name was the president thinking? Neek pounded at the controls, and the recorded loop fuzzed out to reveal space. Endless space.

Text scrolled across the computer screen:

Hours of air left: 233

Gallons of water remaining: 2

Food rations available: none

Communication systems: disabled

Destination: high orbit around planet Neek

Entertainment options: one video available of Heaven Guard airshow #4194, highlighting the double barrel rolls of Guard Four; all Neek holy texts available

Neek screamed. She kicked the console, her boot denting the cheap biometal. The Neek did not leave their planet. They did not live on space stations or strange worlds. They stayed put, to wait for Ardulum’s return. And she…she was meant to rotup here, in Neek space—rot while watching a planet she could see but never again touch. Rot while the Heaven Guard executed flawless formations in Neek’s upper atmosphere, ignoring her gold coffin spinning by. Rot while reading texts she’d had shoved down her throat since she was old enough to read—texts that were slowly destroying her planet.

And…and…

She would never get her settee.

She was only nineteen years old, and she was going to die, alone, in space.

And there was nothing she could do.

Know your Ardulum Characters

Pt 1 – Atalant

Although there are numerous POV characters across the ARDULUM series, the books are really about Atalant’s (formerly known as Neek) journey of found family. In part one of this four part series (find the other three parts on the blog tour for TALES FROM ARDULUM), we explore ten random facts about Atalant that just didn’t make the cut into the final books.

Atalant is an electronics aficionado. In early versions of FIRST DON, she collected antique weaponry and ‘fixed’ it with new technology. There was even a scene where she used her share of the money from the last haul to buy a printer pen so she could draw her own weapons.
Atalant wears boots when all the other characters don’t wear shoes at all. In TALES you get an answer (finally) as to why people don’t wear shoes in space, but no reason is ever given for why Atalantdoes. The reason is With biometal floors on most spaceships, and Neek people secreting empathic mucous from their fingertips andtoetips, shoes are a really good idea. The Neek people are the only beings in the Charted Systems to routinely wear shoes, which doesn’t help their backwater image at all.
The Ardulans and their subspecies have a trinary gender system and trinary procreation system as well. Atalant, like many (but not all!) Neek and Ardulans, is pansexual. Emn is not, so if the two do take on a third partner some day, it will almost certainly be another woman
Atalant specifically chose the magenta color of the Scarlet Lucidityto irritate Nicholas. The two had much more animosity in early versions of FIRST DON, but the final version cooled their relationship to mild ribbing. TALES FROM ARDULUM, in Nicholas’ backstory, showcases the origin of the irritation, when Nicholas, inadvertently, insults Neek several times in a row.
The sex scene between Atalant and Emn in book three was originally slated for book two, and there was a much more intense make out scene in the cockpit as well. The scene was eventually moved to the middle of book three, so Emn and Atalant could have more time to get to know each other, and of course, to further the sexual tension
The sex scene in book three did not originally mention Atalant’s stuk in terms of its lubricating abilities. That part was added in a late round of edits, at the demand of my writing group, who thought it was hearsay to have a character who secreted natural lubricant and not use it in a sex scene. My writing group would like everyone to know that yes, they accept fan mail.
A very early draft of SECOND DON had a dream sequence where Atalant killed the president of Neek. It was later cut as it foreshadowed the actual death of the president a bit too much, and with all the events of book two, made it look like Atalant might have had a hand in the death, instead of it just being a little dream revenge.
Of her three parents, Atalant is closest with her talther. In a draft version of Atalant’s origin story in TALES, Atalant and her talther had a one-to-one talk about her rallies and general pot stirring. Her talther was not pleased, and the scene showed the emotional turmoil of Atalant going against her favorite parent’s wishes.
Atalant’s bark doll that appears in a few places throughout the series was made from andal bark, of course. Maybe that made it semi-sentient?
The scene where Atalant freaks out because she is covered in the synthetic mucous in the Talent Chamber was meant to be the end of a long-winding joke from the first book. Originally, during the opening of Emn’s stasis tube, Nicholas ribbed Atalant about the tube having space slugs, and Atalant went on an epicrant about how much she hated space slugs and how disgusting their mucous was. Nicholas then made a comment about Atalant beinga giant space slug, which did not go over well. Unfortunately, that bit of antagonism did not make the final cut.

For the record, however, Atalant still does hate space slugs.

Giveaway

J.S. Fields is giving away four prizes with this tour: a collectible soft enamel pin of the Mercy’s Pledge (2), and a high res version of one of the interior illustrations (their choice, pick from Yorden, Nick, Emn, or Atalant) (2). Enter via Rafflecopter:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Direct Link

About the Author

J.S. Fields (@Galactoglucoman) is a scientist who has perhaps spent too much time around organic solvents. They enjoy roller derby, woodturning, making chainmail by hand, and cultivating fungi in the backs of minivans. Nonbinary, and yes, it matters.

Fields has lived in Thailand, Ireland, Canada, USA, and spent extensive time in many more places. Their current research takes them to the Peruvian Amazon rainforest each summer, where they traumatizes students with machetes and tangarana ants while looking for rare pigmenting fungi. They live with their partner and child, and a very fabulous lionhead rabbit named Merlin.

Social Media

Website | Twitter | Goodreads | QueeRomance Ink | Amazon

Unpacking shame through writing

Writing

The topic of shame and writing came up again this week—long story how—and I wanted to say something about it. For me, a lot of the shame I’ve encountered, dare I say most, came from religion. In my writing, I have chosen to dismantle it rather than distancing myself from it.

For many of us, because Christianity in particular has left us scarred and traumatized around sex and sexuality, we choose to write negatively about it or avoid it entirely. Those are both valid choices, but they are not the ones I made. Instead, I prefer to subvert it.

A note here on why I specifically do that with Christianity and not other religions: First, I only have personal experience with two religions in my life. I don’t feel I’m the one to process whatever teachings there may or may not be in other faiths. Second, I don’t feel I need to process this with anything other than Christianity because that is the primary source of the rigid rules and shaming I experienced.

The reason I write what I do is to lift that layer of guilt and allow my characters to experience something I did not: faith without strings attached. With that said, I have written all of the following (in no particular order):

A bisexual Christian woman who waited until her late fifties to find love, only after traveling the world and being with many kinds of people
A genderqueer Catholic who links worship, prayer, and sex literally and figuratively
A bisexual Catholic who enjoys consensual non-monogamy and whose faith leads him to acts of service
A bisexual trans pastor of a non-denominational church
An asexual/aromantic pastor of a non-denominational church
A lesbian Christian teen
A Baptist family with multiple queer members, including a bisexual older widow, a married lesbian, and a bi man in a polyamorous relationship
A bisexual Christian songwriter
A bisexual Baptist minister in a polyamorous relationship
A lesbian agnostic Christian who enjoys contemporary Christian music
A Catholic bisexual trans man in a polyamorous relationship
A gay Lutheran whose relationship moves from open to monogamous and married
A teen who is figuring out her bisexuality while trying not to lose her faith
An asexual/aromantic Christian teen who metaphorically kisses a lot of frogs before realizing she’s her own princess

There might be more, but those are the ones I can think of at the moment. I’ve also written a whole lot of allies in the lives of these characters. Their faith is what led them to embrace their LGBTQ+ loved ones rather than rejecting them.

I’m not so idealistic that I’m unaware of the realities. But I do this on purpose. One, there are a lot of people who struggle with wanting to maintain their faith and their queerness. Two, there are family members who need to see healthy examples of supporting their children, parents, and siblings. And three, I am so tired of the way conservative evangelicals in particular seem to think they have the market on what being a “real” Christian looks like.

Sometimes I wish that people of Christian faith would listen to themselves and how they conceptualize non-Christians or Christians whose life doesn’t look like what they’ve been taught to expect. They want things to be tidy, for someone to have “sin” and then overcome it. After all, that’s what most churches, even ones that aren’t conservative evangelical, teach in some form.

But life isn’t like that. People are more complex. I don’t want to only show one kind of relationship, and I don’t believe that people engaging in healthy expression of their sexuality is “sin.” Nor do I believe that there is one single way to be healthy and whole.

I suppose like with everything else in my life, I don’t want to pick a side on this subject. So I’ll keep writing about people of faith who don’t feel a need to push their agenda on everyone else, LGBTQ+ people of faith, and places where those things meet each other.