Short Story: The London Kiss

Again, I used the Weekly Short Story Contest on Goodreads as an excuse to write another bit of backstory for Alongside the Enemy. The topic for this week had been "The London Kiss" with no other description. To this end, I modified the tradition of the first kiss after a tour to fit my world and to provide insight into the relationship between Mercy Lyons and her "friend" Cordelia Leduc. Leduc has gone through more than a few name changes and if you head over to my post on creating cultures you'll see why.

“The London Kiss”


“All hands, this is the Captain.” Commander Bracegirdle’s voice sounded throughout HMS Foxhound. “As you know we are due to dock at Outpost Behn in a few hours where you are to enjoy your well earned three weeks shore leave.”

Midshipman Mercy Lyons lay on her bunk, one hand behind her head, the other holding to a data pad with the day’s gun deck duty roster. Her bunk mate, Midshipman Cordelia Leduc was on the bridge, as she often was when Mercy was not. The two former classmates, while sharing a tiny stateroom, had never been in it at the same time during their entire eight week tour.

“Since the age of sail,” Cmdr. Bracegirdle continued over the ship’s public address, “It has been tradition for one member of the crew to be drawn by lots to be greeted first ashore by his or her sweetheart.”

Short Story: The Next Best Thing

As I work on my next novel I've been doing a lot of short stories to help flesh out the world and the characters. I've debated a lot about posting them here on the website and come down on the "share them" side of the debate."

So here we have a chance to meet the novel's protagonist Mercy Lyons when she was still at the Naval Academy and still just a first year Midshipman. This was originally written for the Good Reads website Weekly Short Story Contest Group.


"The Next Best Thing"
1600 Words

I was in my second year at the Academy.

Alexandria, this beautiful thing from Tyson 4, dumped me that morning because she said she knew her cat better than knew me.

Commander LeGrange had just lit me up in front of my entire Terraforming seminar for missing two equations in my draft term paper.

My roommate was back in our bunk with the Hanover twins, and he let me know that I was not to come home that night.

So there I was, at the junior officer bar, two beers into my charted course to complete inebriation.

Where's Chapter 2?

For the weekly short story contest over on Goodreads last week I wrote a story about Mercy Lyons called "The London Kiss." In this story I establish that it's a military tradition with the Royal Space Navy for crew to be drawn at random to go "ashore" first and kiss their sweetheart after a tour of duty. (Because I'm also thinking about having it published it's not posted here, yet.) It's a fun story that shows some character background, allows me to engage in some world building, and see what happens.

But a friend read it for me and then immediately lamented "But I want to read chapter 2! I like the vignettes, and the back story, but when do we see more of the novel? Do you know how hard it is to sleep at night not knowing what happens now that the ship is all but adrift in space with only a handful of officers remaining and no active guns? I wasn't this sleep deprived since I babysat my sisters quintuplets who were all at the age of 2 months."

Okay, so I kind of paraphrased a little there.

Creating a "Real" subculture

For the Weekly Short Story Contest over on Goodreads I decided to take a stab at doing a story for the Queen's Fury universe in which my novel is going to take place. I want to keep developing the world and force myself to think about the various ways the races interact, as well as some back story on Mercy Lyons, how she interacts with others and what kinds of events would have landed her a place on the bridge of the HMS Diamondback where she finds herself thrust into the role of captain.

But rather than really focusing on Mercy I've been instead putting a lot of creative energy into the development of one of the races of the Royal Commonwealth of Worlds, the Hartishians.

Hartishi Prime is a jungle covered world and home to what are known in less polite slang as "space elves". They feature green skin, white hair and rows of sharp meat-rending teeth. Yes, these elves are strict carnivores. So much so, in fact that they cannot digest plant matter.

They are also intended to be a compliment to the Oresmen, dwarf-like men and women who have, for generations, populated the high gravity mining colonies. I admit that I like the play of elves and dwarves in fantasy and I don't see any reason to exclude them from science fiction. After all, isn't Spok really just Elrond in pants?

But where I'm getting stuck is coming up with a believable culture for the Hartishians.

Fear of Success

I know this sounds like an odd fear to have.  Who wouldn't want to make a mint on their creations?  Why would I be at all concerned that anything I write, from the Queen's Fury to Fantasti*Con go on to the level of achievement known by The Hunger Games or Twilight?

It's a fear of the road to get there, that road being the amorphic label "Young Adult".

Especially as I'm not writing with the target audience of "12 year olds".

Would it smell as sweet?

A friend lamented that once she knew she was having a girl, she had no idea what to name her.  I quipped on her Facebook wall that naming a baby isn't really that big of a deal.  After all, it's not like that name will be with them for their entire lives and then end up engraved in stone when they die, right?

I realize that naming a character is a somewhat less significant life event.  After all, until published, my characters only exist in my mind, and even after the first book is printed, they don't really interact with too many people.  Plus, names can change throughout the writing process, and finally it's just a character, right?