Alex Gordon's Blog

This unusually warm, wet summer is winding down. After the remnants of Hurricane Polo passed over a couple of days ago, some cooler, drier air moved in. Light jacket weather. It’s wonderful.

I wrapped up the first draft of Chaos Agent a little over a week ago, and since then have been playing catch-up with this and that. I need to refill the freezer with autumnal soups, and started yesterday with a small batch of Turkish Lentil-Carrot Soup. An Italian green lentil soup with be next. Some type of curried butternut will join the line-up. Some bean things.

Chaos clocked in at about 173K, which makes it the longest Jani book to date. It needs cutting. Tightening. Some things I felt would work at the beginning did not work and need to be excised. I plan on giving the newish printer a workout and print the thing—double-sided—for the first read-through. Reading that way is just different, especially when you’ve been staring at screens all day.

Here’s a rough synopsis:

On the way to the idomeni homeworld of Shèrá and her new posting as Speaker of Humanish to the Oligarch, Jani Kilian receives an urgent call from Dr. John Shroud and detours to a Neoclona clinic. What she learns there is something that endangers the hybrids of Thalassa and threatens the stability of the Commonwealth and delicate negotiations with the idomeni.

Then she arrives on Shèrá and struggles to adjust to her new role amid culture clashes and misunderstandings while trying to dig into the above threat and deal with other mundane and not-so-mundane matters.

Meanwhile, Roni McGaw, the documents examiner who worked with Jani in Law of Survival, has recovered from her injuries…mostly, and now fights paper crime as a Registry Director-at-Large. It’s in this capacity that she finds herself aboard a Service vessel that’s headed out on a routine exercise. Except the exercise proves far from routine. And the commanding officer is someone she knows…except he wears an eyepatch now.

In other news, after delaying way too long, I am having a new driveway and front sidewalk/step installed. The project is currently at about the halfway point, give or take. Concrete driveway apron and sidewalk/step are in. Asphalt and brick trim to come. Weather interfered a bit—thanks, Polo. But the weather looks like it will cooperate for the next week and a half, at least at this point. Fingers crossed.

In Nature is Weird news, during my walk the other day, I was oohing and ahing over the clear blue sky when I spotted a single tiny cloud puttering along. At first, I thought maybe it was a toy rocket or some other thing that someone had launched—I watched it until it vanished, then continued walking.

I was wearing a hat, and the brim blocked that part of the sky from view. A bit later, I looked up for some reason and saw that the cloud had reformed? Recoalesced? As I watched, it struggled to remain intact before once again disintegrating. I checked a few times to see if it would give it another go, but I couldn’t tell because it was heading towards the sun and, well, I’ve become rather fond of my retinas over the years. I don’t believe it did, but I’ll never know for sure.

The Little Cloud That Tried and Tried.

It was one of the weirdest things I’d ever seen.

[ALT text: progressive shots of a tiny cloud moving across an otherwise cloudless sky, falling apart, vanishing, reforming, then vanishing again]

…and so close to finishing the Chaos Agent first draft. I’m wrapping up the last few scenes, going back and forth and moving details and moments around. Crossed 20K for September yesterday. 149K words since May. Overall, just under 170K.

It does look like this will be longer than Contact Imminent, though I know a few things that will be cut. Overwriting was possibly committed here and there as I worked out details and wanted to make sure I had plot points figured out. Setting things up here and there for the next book, the book or two after that, and then the end.

Plotting several books ahead. Early 00s Pantser Me couldn’t ever imagine doing this.

In the meantime, the house and yard have not received needed attention. I have had paint and painting  supplies in my bedroom for months while the boxes with a rug, new curtain rods, and furnishings have taken up half the living room. That’s that post-draft project—while said draft settles and I clear my head, I will patch and sand and tape and paint and scrub and assemble. I am looking forward to it. Different skill set.

Banana Nice Cream w/ Hot Fudge

In other news, I had a craving for something frozen, but didn’t have the time to make my favorite Sicilian-style gelato. So, banana nice cream filled in. A few nights ago, I sliced up some bananas, set them on a baking sheet, and stuck them in the deep freeze. Last night, I zzz’d them in the food processor with a couple of tablespoons of milk and a teaspoon of vanilla paste. The bananas make a lovely, creamy frozen concoction that, yes, tastes like bananas. But you can add things like frozen strawberries or other fruit, chocolate, other flavorings. I’m thinking of trying instant espresso for the next batch.

::checks date of last post::

Well.

Lots has been going on…just not here in the blog. Work on Chaos Agent continues. I’ve been sticking to my 1K+ words/day goal that I started back in May,  which means I’ve written 30K+ words per month for the last three months and have close to 18K so far in August. The draft stands at about 135K, but this draft is rough—I’m juggling a mystery along with cultural, personal, and political conflict. I’d say this book is closer to Law of Survival or especially Contact Imminent as opposed to the more focused single-line plots of Code of Conduct or Echoes of War.

And I’ve already marked a couple of darlings to cut. Minor plotlines. This book doesn’t need any more plotlines.

I will also be pulling together three older fantasy shorts into a single collection. West Side Ghost Story & other tales will include the title story, which originally appeared in ZNB’s anthology Second Round: A Return to the Ur-Bar, along with “Continuing Education” and “8 rms., full bsmt.” It’s scheduled for release over at Book View Café on November 3, and I will do my best to have it up at the other stores at the same time. I’m only planning for the e-book at present. I’ll see what the final page count is and whether a trade edition is possible.

In mundane news, I’ve spent the last couple of evenings cutting back shrubbery in preparation for a new driveway and sidewalk/front step. Both are long overdue.

Add another shovelful to the money pit.

In closing, have a Monarch butterfly dining on the swamp milkweed in the pollinator garden. It’s the first official year for this; in addition to the milkweed, I have hosta, the two volunteer common ninebark*, some blue lobelia, fringed loosestrife (which will be going to that Great Nursery in the Sky because it’s too damned aggressive), volunteer ground cherries, and volunteer boneset. The Jacob Cline bee balm, lovely tall red blooms, is already spent.

*I found the single canes growing next to my Li’l Devil cultivar ninebark. I don’t know if they grew from seeds dropped by birds or if they sprang off the cultivar (assuming the cultivar is grafted to hardy common ninebark rootstock, which I don’t know).

Monarch dining on some swamp milkweed.

…near the end of it at that.

Well.

It’s been busy. Since I started my “at least 1K a day” run last month, I’ve missed only a couple of days. A total of 30,629 words in May, and 20,723 words so far this month. 79,176 words of solid draft in total, and I’m not quite at the halfway point. Contact Imminent is the longest book in the series at iirc about 146K. At the rate things are going, Chaos Agent may top that. There’s a genetics engineering thread, a culture clash/adjustment thread, and politics threading through both. Some things that simmered through the last few books boil over.

Things are moving along. May it continue.

I haven’t forgotten about the playlist. Still working on it.

Well, April went by in a flash of blue light. And now May is halfway gone.

I had finally gotten into a decent groove with Chaos Agent—1K+ words a day for over a week—when I broke the string by overnighting in Chicago to see Ivy at Park West on the 14th. I’ve liked them since the early ’00s, have all their albums. They had broken up for a while. Then one of the founding members, Adam Schlesinger, passed away in 2020, which felt like the end, period. But Durand and Chase rereleased remastered albums, then one with material that featured Schlesinger in every song.

It was a good show. They paid tribute to Schlesinger, and were really gratified by the reception they received. I don’t know if they will continue as a band after this tour. Hope so.

The next day, instead of catching the morning train home, I visited Lincoln Park Zoo for the first time. Walked all along the Nature Boardwalk and checked out the native plants (hey, I have that one…I should get that one…). Then I went to check out the animals. It wasn’t the best time, for whatever reason—I saw one rhesus monkey, but no other monkeys or great apes. No seals or otters.

I did see a male and a female lion, each gnawing on bones bigger than my femur. Ethan, the flightless bald eagle, rendered such due to an injury. Finally, two cinereous vultures. They have what look like white inner eyelids—when they close them, they look like zombie vultures. Annoyed zombie vultures.

After several hours wandering the zoo, I hit the hotel for a quick lunch, then headed to the train station. A total of over 7 miles walked, according to my pedometer. I am very tired.

But tomorrow, back to work.

In closing…I’ve been toying with putting together a Jani books playlist for a while now. I don’t subscribe to a streaming service, so unless I can find a song on You Tube I won’t be able to link, but most of those songs should be there. Some characters have only one song, while others have several. A bit of fun to play with in-between chapters.

…or in my case, April wind-swept torrents with added tornado warning sirens.

AKA Spring in the Midwest.

What can I say? The year is flying. Still slow and steady goes Chaos Agent. Lots of politics in this one as Jani comes to realize that her supposed cultural advisory position to the idomeni Oligarch is anything but, especially as events and people from her past turn up to complicate matters. I’ve known the major plot points and ending for a while, but now the mystery/investigation plot pieces are coming together and combining with past events and emotional matters. As with Endgame, things that happened during the War of Vynshàrau Ascension play a role.

In office equipment news, I finally had to decommission my ancient HP LaserJet 1100, and when I say “ancient,” I mean I needed to use a serial:parallel adapter to use it. It worked for ages with only the occasional jam, but then the jams became more and more frequent and it was tax time which meant Kris needed to print All The Things for her CPA, so. Over the years, I came to understand that HP printers were no longer the default option when it came to reliability, so I did some digging. I wanted an all-in-one color laserjet, and Consumer Reports recommended the Brother MFC-L3765CDW. Found it on sale at Costco and grabbed it. Still adjusting to the joy of wireless printing at home. I mean, I had it for a little while back when I had a functioning inkjet. But for Reasons, it stopped working. Now I have it again, and it’s marvelous.

It’s out! My first collection!

For someone who doubted she would even be able to write short, it’s a kinda big deal.

Anyway, here’s the blurb:

A boy…a girl…a spaceship…

A collection of stories about a lost love, a stolen spacecraft, and life on the run.

Gia Solari has never forgotten the day that Del Morehouse flew out of her life.

Unfortunately, he stole a ship to do it.

Even worse, that ship was the Peregrine, a one-of-a-kind experimental craft loaded with patented tech that its owners would like returned, please. They always believed Gia knew what Del planned, and now, after five long years, they’ve come after her again with a simple request: tell us where Del Morehouse is, or we will destroy your life.

Gia doesn’t know where Del is. But she wants to find him, too. Because he’s in danger. And she still loves him.

Del Morehouse had his reasons for stealing the Peregrine, the sorts of reasons that only made sense to another pilot. She was beautiful. Handled like a dream. At times, it even seemed like she communicated with him.

He had no idea. But he would soon find out.

And then there’s the ship herself. Her nickname is Perry, and she’s full of surprises.

Universal link to the ‘zon etc

Book View Café

…it’s almost March.

Work was done. I finally released the updated trade paperback of Code into the wild. If you already have it, no reason to get this one. I just changed the ISBN and publisher info to Glass Green LLC and did some very light editing that consisted mostly of removing exclamation marks my God what was I thinking with all those damned things. I also changed the paper from white to cream, which means the book is thicker and the pages look like those of a work of fiction and not a soft-cover textbook.

The Breakaway collection comes out in a couple of weeks.

Chaos Agent work continues. I’ve also written the odd scene for the next book and sketched out a possible novella, neither of which is really useful but it’s the way the overall story is working out.

In one of those “I knew this day was coming” situations, I finally had to replace my ancient HP1100 LaserJet printer. I bought in the late 90s or early 00s—I needed to get hold of a serial-to-parallel adapter for it when I joined the World of Apple back in 2004. I printed out so many drafts on that thing. Then electronic submissions became the standard. I liked printing in color on occasion, so I switched to inkjets. But after I went through a couple of those, I got sick of dealing with ink cartridges and clogged printheads and dug the 1100 out of the figurative mothballs. It’s chugged along these last few years, coming through at tax time and when needed for various non-writing related tasks. But the connection with my laptop would drop every few jobs, and recently paper jams had become more frequent. A decision needed to be made. It’s tax time. I needed a working printer. Plus, well, I wanted to be able to print in color and I wanted a wireless option, too. I decided the timing was right when I found a list of recommended all-in-one color laser printers in the latest online Consumer Reports newsletter and then found that their top pick was on sale at Costco.

So I am now the owner of a Brother MFC-L3765CDW. It is a monster, 45 pounds and way more printer than I need, but when I need it, it will be there. I also like the copy and scan functions (even though I’ve been using an app on my phone for most of that these last few years.). I’ve named it “Chonk” for now because it is a major one.

But decommissioning the old 1100 makes me a little sad. It was Old Faithful for so long. And it’s not a cliché to say that they don’t make them like that anymore.

…Happy New Year?

A busy month, nearly at its end, that included way too much time spent shoveling snow and shivering. After two winters so mild that I thought I’d been transported to the Carolina coast, Midwest winter is back, baybee. We’ve reached the point where the prospect of daytime highs in the 30s (F) sounds like heaven, and the first of those is still a couple of days away.

::thinking warm thoughts::

Work on Chaos Agent continues. Not as far along as I’d like to be, but that’s pretty much how it is these days. I continue to work out scenes for the next couple of books at the same time, which in a way is helpful—I know which breadcrumbs to scatter about in CA. But in another way, it feels like I’m standing facing three walls of floor-to-ceiling notes with string connectors and keywords scribbled in black marker. You know, like this guy.

A hint about the plot? Okay. Newly-appointed Speaker of Humanish Jani Kilian, Lucien Pascal, and a small group of hybrid support and medical staff are on their way to Shèrá when a plea from John Shroud causes them to detour to a Channel Worlds Neoclona facility. Complications are the last thing they need, but John hands them a big one. On to Shèrá they go, where even more await. A couple of old faces return, one as a POV. An old enemy from Jani’s youth surfaces. Whole fistfuls of breadcrumbs.

In other news, I have a collection entitled Breakaway coming out on March 10. I gathered together all the Del & Gia stories, and added a related story, “The Repairer of Lost and Broken Things,” that appeared in the ZNB anthology Solar Flare.

I enjoyed writing these stories. I’m glad to have the chance to gather them in one place.

Need to fill that new e-reader? Just plain need something new to read?

Book View Café is currently running its annual Boxing Day Sale, which actually runs from the 26th through the 31st.

It really is a great deal.