It’s time for more Barium. The past two days have been productive, and I’ve entered the part of the year where I’m trying to hit 2k words a day every day.
I should note, this is all very first draft stuff. No guarantee that it will end up in a final draft in this form, no guarantee that it makes much sense. No guarantee that it follows or establishes continuity with other Barium pieces I post here.
But there’s a lot more of this coming, so enjoy.
I’ve got another bit of scene for you, something I was playing around with yesterday while trying to figure out how to shape the conflicts near the middle of the book. I don’t think I have posted all of the relevant background material for this segment, and it doesn’t directly follow from previous ones, so I’ll give you a brief intro. Daemon is an unbraked AI, highly illegal in this setting, and is confined to a large black box sitting in the cargo bay of the family’s ship. There’s a simple terminal with actual physical keyboard built into the box, the better to prevent Daemon from interfacing with and spreading to any other systems. Barium and Cesium’s parents have been contracted by figures unknown to recover this black box and deliver it. Barry and Cesi have been surreptitiously chatting with Daemon for some time now.
Sorry for missing last Friday, I was busy driving to a family reunion and didn’t have something prepped ahead of time.
Anyway, I have good news! I’m making progress on my project for the fall. It’s possible that I’m not supposed to start it yet, given that this is in fact a school project, but I’ve already bitten off too much to chew so I don’t feel guilty about it.
I think I’ve already mentioned this, but the goal that I’ve set for myself is to not only write a middle grade sci-fi space adventure but to edit and write a second draft of it too. I’m not sure what the technical length requirements might be, so I’m using the 50,000 word novel as my measuring stick. Given that I’m openly inspired by Diane Duane’s So You Want To Be A Wizard (which the internet tells me is roughly 124,000 words) my 50k target is possibly conservative.
I have previously hit a regular 2000 words a day for a month at a time. My hope for this section of the summer is to push myself back up to speed, get into the rhythm of writing that much every day, and thus prepare for producing a novel not just once but twice. There’ll be an interruption to this pattern when I run off to work at LARP camp for kids, but with a little bit of luck I’ll be able to make it stick.
And if I cheat things just a bit, by getting some additional material for the project done while I’m ramping up to the pace I’ll need, I don’t think I’ll lose any sleep over it. Besides which, much of the material that I’m writing now is stuff that may never see the light of day. I’m writing scenes for the story (which will be about Barium Deep), but I’m also writing about the background of the setting and trying to figure out how things work. The more I can establish now (and the more excited about writing this story I can be) the easier it will be when I have to be writing it all through the fall.
This means I’m doing research. I’m reading articles on AI and augmented / mixed reality and space exploration and 3D printing and whatever other technological things I can find that seem appropriate to incorporate into my space setting. And I’m reading and watching things that feel like the right tone or genre or subject matter: So You Want To Be A Wizard, 2001: A Space Odyssey, some of the Vorkosigan books, Digimon Tamers, etc. It’s a bit eclectic.
Actually, here’s a cool video to watch. It’s totally not the same technology, and it’s a very different time period, but something about the claustrophobia, compactness, and industrial nature of submarines seems like it translates well to spaceships in my mind. That training & orientation video really emphasizes the intricacy and condensed nature of the WW2 submarine, and those both feel like things that would carry over to the future of putting humans in tin cans in space. You use the space you have on important things, like the machinery that keeps you alive and keeps your ship powered and moving. Unless you’re fabulously wealthy, everything else is extra.
This is the first time that I’ve not written one of Chuck Wendig’s flash fiction challenges since January (with the exception of the times when I’ve been working at summer camp without internet, but even then I think I got lucky and he didn’t post a challenge). I feel weird, honestly. I had ideas for this week’s challenge, but I’ve been so busy for the past few days…
Instead, I offer you the newly edited version of Barium Deep. It hasn’t been deeply revised, and there are more changes to come, but I think I’ve managed to improve the piece’s clarity and presentation. Let me know if you like it!
More Star Citizen related art, just because.
I wrote this piece for terribleminds, because my last piece was 1000 words too long for this week’s space opera challenge. This piece sticks with Barium, but is set many years after the previous one. At least ten years after it. In case you’re confused by the multiple names, Bury’em = Barium = Barry, and Casi = Cesium. Enjoy!
Gorgeous artwork by George Hull, for the game Star Citizen
I didn’t write the following bit of space drama with the above image in mind, but it’s a beautiful fit anyway. What follows is another piece of “middle grade” fiction, one that holds true to the more classically action-adventure oriented stories that I usually like to tell. Enjoy!
(Note: There’s now a great deal of other Barium Deep material here. This is the edited version of this same post, and this is the collection of other posts linked to Barium Deep.)
Fistful of Wits 