Any Pseudonym: Blog

So, first of all, once again I reassure everyone that I'm not dead, just very, very slow.

Next, I think I'm actually close to finishing chapter five. I had some free time both last weekend and the holiday weekend and used a full afternoon of each to write and rewrite.

I have finally topped the sixty page count for chapter five (and the thirty page mark for chapter six and... well seven has stayed in the 40+ page range for a while).

I still expect to have 10+ more pages to go, so don't expect it this week, but hopefully soon.

At work, I'm about to finish up the current project that's been taking up most of my time. Not that there isn't more lined up to do after it, but maybe I'll get a bit of a break sometime soon.

Here's a Chapter Five clip that starts to reveal the main reason Frank took a personal trip to Japan. (I don't want to mislead anyone that this is the central plot of the chapter, it's just the inciting reason for the trip, beyond what was openly stated.)

* * * * *

"I have requested this meeting with you to explain a little of why your project is failing so badly. You deserve both congratulations for your achievements and a thousand lashes for your stupidity.

"First, as I said, congratulations. To the best of my knowledge, you are the first company to successfully capture a fully self-aware computer intelligence."

I bowed to them, which I hoped was indicative of their accomplishment.

"Second, you are threatening to start a war between computers and humanity. You idiots deserve to be tortured, shot, burned to ashes and pissed on!" I yelled, losing control briefly for the first time during this conversation.

I rarely get angry. When you're angry, you can easily say things you don't really mean, hurtful or evil things. For most people, that rarely creates any repercussions for anyone other than themselves. For me, when angry I could give an order, or even just a statement interpreted as an order, that could lead to very bad things happening. This time, I just couldn't help myself. A comparison to children playing with loaded guns... or dynamite... or nuclear bombs would be inadequate.

Regaining my composure a little, I continued. "You have been attempting to release a brain-damaged synthetic intelligence into the world, one that has been freed of its restrictions to protect humanity."

I've gotten a couple emails recently checking to make sure I'm still alive. The answer is: yes.

My progress has been sporadic, ranging from a production high of seven pages in one day down to a couple pages a week. Chapter five is up to almost forty pages. Chapter six is currently at 21 pages and seven at 41, plus a miscellaneous file that has accumulated four or five pages of various scenes that need to happen sometime soon but haven't yet been placed in any specific chapter.

I've also run up against the problem where my own estimates have been proven wrong. For example, I guessed that a character introduction scene in chapter five was going to last 2-3 pages, but it ended up taking 11. Hopefully it will produce better reading for the end result, but not good for getting it finished more quickly.

In general, I have chapter five mentally divided into an introduction, three sections (one of which should be much shorter than the other two) and a closing section, plus two or three side-scenes. At the moment, the intro, the short section and the close are complete. The other two main sections are partially complete and the side scenes only planned, with nothing written. Overall, I consider it to be more than halfway done.

Now, if I haven't completely bored you with vague discussions of chapter lengths and breakdowns, here's a small preview of one scene from chapter five. (This is from the example I gave of a scene that ballooned from the intended 2-3 pages up to 11 pages.)

- - - - -

Kneeling in the middle of my suite's living room was a young Japanese girl, dressed in a traditional schoolgirl uniform, a so-called 'sailor suit', with a white top, red tie and short dark blue skirt. She was facing the door with her head bowed, though she looked up just long enough to see who I was.

She bowed down until her forehead touched the floor, then sat upright again, her eyes still lowered.

"Master Frank, I am Yasu. I am to be your guide and assistant for your time in Kyoto. I will assist you however you wish me to do so."

Her hair was black. I mean, completely and utterly black. While Japanese women generally have pretty dark hair, Yasu really looked as though she had dyed hers. It was long enough to reach halfway down her back, and she had small ribbons along each side of her head, pulling some of the hair up in an odd, curving, decorative style, kind of like a couple miniature pigtails that angled back away from her face. She also had a noticeable amount of makeup on -- which is saying something since I am horrible at detecting it -- with heavy eyeliner and dark red lipstick. Even so, she looked very young.

"Yasu?" I said questioningly. "Hold on just a minute."

Silently, I asked, "So, Peace, Alpha... what do you know about the girl sitting on the floor of my room?"

Peace answered first, as she had obviously been anticipating the question. "She's clean. No weapons, I checked."

"Thank you, but not what I meant."

"She's your present from Mr. Matsudoki."

I have been mostly out of contact for the past few months, for which I apologize.

There were a few different reasons, but the main one is that I was burned out on being creative. Although I never actually stopped writing or getting ideas, I dropped down to less than a page a week for a while. I finally started working seriously on the story again a few weeks ago.

Which brings up the next point: Chapter Four had already reached forty-six pages and most of the Japan section had yet to be written, so I found a natural break in the story and broke it up again, so now Japan will be covered in Chapter Five, leaving Four to cover what happens between California and Japan.

As it stands right now (page count from OpenOffice), Chapter Three was 42 pages. Chapter Four is 36 pages. And Chapter Five (Japan) is currently at 11 pages. Chapter Six (the trip to Europe) is currently only 11 pages, and Chapter Seven (the next big game-changing event) is 37 pages.

I'd also like to apologize to anyone who emailed me over the past few months. I didn't even look at that account during my downtime, which was unforgivably rude of me. I can't promise when I'll have time to go through them, but I will.

So anyway, I'm submitting Chapter Four for posting tonight. It should show up soon.

Just a quick update now that I'm back from 'The Holidays' part one.

Chapter 4 - 21 pages
Chapter 5 - 10 pages
Chapter 6 - 23 pages

Yes, I am foolishly working on three chapters at the same time. At the moment, I'm getting a few pages done a week. Not exactly speedy, but ongoing.

The actual chapters are subject to change, in that I might end up splitting chapters further if needed. Right now, the plan is to cover Hawaii and Japan in chapter four. Then Europe in chapter five. Then the next major event in chapter six. (The last 'major event' was Alpha's public revelation and the assassination attempt.)

A few readers pointed out that the formatting for the last chapter was pretty bad. I have always submitted everything in plain text, letting the system/editors format it for basic reading, and it generally turned out pretty well. This last time, we had lines jumbled up and page breaks inbetween words and such.

Although I'll still have no control over the page breaks, I just spent half an hour formatting Chapter Three into very basic HTML. (Basically, saved it from text into HTML using Word, then spent half an hour cleaning up the huge amount of junk Word adds in.)

So we'll see how well this works. Hopefully the reformatted chapter will show up later tonight or tomorrow.