Woodhollow Tales is a short novel I started writing in the summer of 2001. It was originally intended to be fictionalized account of the events of my first summer out of high school, and my last summer before joining the military and starting the rest of my life, a concept I was still too young to completely understand. The course of human events completely derailed what the story was going to be about…everything that had happened that summer didn’t seem to matter anymore. Sometimes I wondered if it happened at all. I put the story away and forgot about it.
WOOL, the debut novel by Hugh Howey, has a pretty interesting back story. It was first self-published as a series of short novels by Howey, and later picked up by a publisher and collected into the WOOL Omnibus. It is the story of a world so ravaged by a poisonous atmosphere that humanity has been relegated to living in a structure known as the Silo, a bunker that reaches 140 stories underground. Their only knowledge of the outside world comes in the form of images shown on screens transmitted by cameras lining the outside of the silo. These cameras are constantly under threat of being covered by grime, and need to be cleaned often. Cleaning, however, is a death sentence, and a job delegated to those to break the Silo’s laws, the most heinous of which is expressing a desire to leave and go outside.
The Rains of Castamere. Where do I even begin with this one? Chances are by the time this goes up, you’ve seen something, somewhere, talking about the audience reaction to the events of last night’s episode. You’ve seen people familiar only with the show freak out, and you’ve probably seen people who read the books years ago telling them not to freak out and stop watching the show, because you’re in for a treat soon (that treat probably getting pushed to sometime next year).
The NorEastern Empire spent much of its six year war against Crowndon getting its posterior kicked. Though masters of subterfuge and intelligence gathering, the NorEastern empire had neither the resources nor the military prowess to endure a long standing war, and by the time of the battle of the Divide, they were all but broken.
Today’s post is an excerpt from the novella “Where, No One Knows”, which I wrote for NaNoWriMo last year. In it, Pixie Sinclaire is tasked with infiltrating Where, No One Knows, a floating prison made out of three enormous interconnected ironclad warships. Her task: find and extract her former lover, Rigel Rinkenbach, before he unlocks the secret to creating Blackwood and gives it to the NorEastern Empire’s enemies.
Things don’t go as planned, however. For no sooner than Pixie arrives on the ship does a woman named Dougherty lead a mutiny, throwing the ship into chaos. She also wants Rinkenbach, for very different reasons. Pixie and Dougherty forge a fragile alliance, and come up with a plan to get Pixie onto the command ship where Rinkenbach is being held.
Lots of weird things go through a man’s mind when he hasn’t moved in twenty four hours. He begins to question things. It starts with “what am I doing here”, in regards to the task he is currently performing. That then leads to the same question, only in regards to existence. Eli had gone past both points and back again.
Arufina Villanova is a member of a society of assassins known as the Scarlett Circle, an organization trumped in mystery and cloak-and-dagger-ness by only the Ephemeral Cartographers. Her older sister was a Cartographer before the war, and Aru might have been as well. Something else happened, however, and Arufina’s sister disappeared, putting Arufina on the run.
Pixie Sinclaire…where to begin? Most of her childhood was spent traveling the NorEastern countryside with her father, digging around in old caves and tombs. At the age of fourteen, her father was arrested and deported for grave robbing–ahem, sorry. “Unlicensed Archaeology”–leaving Pixie to fend for herself.
She was recruited into the North Eastern Subterfuge Society, where she served the Empire during the war with Crowndon as an agent provocateur, smuggling plans in and out of enemy territory and sabotaging Crowndon equipment.
It was during this time that she ran afoul of Sir Rigel Rinkenbach and, despite her better judgment, began a long and sordid relationship with him that ended due to a disagreement on whether or not Rigel should build weapons of mass destruction to end the war.
Hey, people have broken up over smaller things, right?
After the war, Pixie went to work for herself, setting up shop onLibertine’s Roost in Demon’s Eye bay, home of pirates, mercenaries, and alchemists without conscience.
This is an animatic for a project I hope to produce over the next six months for my senior project. It will incorporate digitally created visual effects with live action footage. Hopefully it turns out like I see it in my head (always the tricky part, that), and I can use it for a Kickstarter or a pitch video to get the web-series I want to produce a chance in hell of existing.
This is very much a work in progress, so suggestions are welcome.
Sir Rigel Rinkenbach is the most brilliant mind in the Imperial Triumvirate, and he knows it. He is also completely devoid of morals and has no time to waste on ethics. The only thing he cares about, if he can be said to care about anything, is the rapid advancement of civilization.
It was this attitude that got him ex-communicated from the Academic Alliance of Alchemists and Alliterators, and led to his estrangement from the equally brilliant Pixie Sinclaire, the only other person on the planet Rigel might consider having the potential to be his equal…someday. Perhaps. Maybe.
Captain la Pierre holds a grudging respect for Rinkenbach, but doesn’t necessarily trust him, and he certainly doesn’t like him…he’s a NorEasterman, after all. But he’s capable, and when you’re on the run for your life, that’s nearly the only thing that counts. He also knows the formula for Blackwood, the substance that makes the world go round. Rinkenbach has a taste for the finer things in life; gramophones, tea, and chess. He prefers a duelist’s stance when fighting, and uses a rapier. He possess the ability to think around problems, rather than through them (like Klaudhopper), but he realizes the importance of a blunt approach. A cunning strategist, la Pierre often laments not having Rinkenbach on his side during the war.
“I like your brand o’ thinkin, Rink. If not for the loopy machinations of cunning, lunatic minds such as your own, we’d have never gotten off the ground!” -Roderick la Pierre, Captain of the Pernicious Platitude, overheard during a train heist.
Blackwood Empire 