Category: Modern paranormal

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NaNoWriMo 2017 prep – Day 4

And then there were more notes….

Notes for Day 4

  • Elaine and Peter meet through Joslyn and Jason in the game. Elaine is fairly certain that Peter doesn’t think much of her, which isn’t the case at all, but continues to believe this until Jason sets her straight.
  • Peter’s condition flares up again—badly enough to warrant drastic action—after two years of relative quiet, right before the launch of their full-immersion gaming experiment. In a phone conversation with his brother Jason, he tells him to go on with everything as planned as if nothing is wrong.
    • As far as Peter’s concerned, their work on the Universe game is more important than his survival—the game and the technology they’ve developed to supplement it is their legacy for Jason’s someday family and for their niece, Wynter (and any additional children Marissa and Brannon may have).
    • Jason calls Marissa to let her know what’s going on. She’s torn between letting their parents know and keeping quiet about what’s happening.  At the outset, she decides not to tell them.  She does, however, call their Uncle Ezecaius.
  • Peter’s condition eventually deteriorates to the point where he’s placed in a medically induced coma as the doctors charged with his care work to scrape together what’s needed to treat him.
    • With the help of their uncle and Brannon, Marissa and Jason manage to get Peter into full immersion in the game during this period of time so he doesn’t suffer cognitive deterioration, a possibility that concerns some of his doctors—and his family.
      • They face some challenges before they’re allowed to do it, including arranging for Peter to be transferred to a private facility and a change to some of his medical team.
    • Peter’s family faces challenges from various quarters regarding the game itself—and the VR technology they’ve developed, as well as the predictive AI that Peter and Brannon programmed together.
      • The family faces some pressure to use the technology to help law enforcement and the Department of Defense in ways that they find morally questionable.
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NaNoWriMo 2017 prep – Day 2

Below are more notes from my planning for NaNoWriMo 2017.
 
  • One of Elaine’s classmates is Hadrian Bridger, who is starting his graduate work as well. They have a few classes together and while Elaine doesn’t know much about him, they’re becoming friends.
  • Peter’s middle name comes from Ezecaius Koerpel-Schliemann, the head of UNSETIC. Ezecaius is an uncle(?) of the the Grey children and—in the view of Peter, at least—has been there more for them than their parents.
  • The company that Joslyn was temping at helped set up the gaming café where GreySoft is going to test its full-immersion gaming experience. She was also a donor to the crowdfunding campaign that helped launch the game, so she got passes to come in and try the experience. Both she and Elaine have dabbled in the game before and she brings Elaine along with her to try it out.

  • Joslyn and Jason first meet each other through the game and then later begin dating. Elaine and Peter follow a similar trajectory, though at first Elaine doesn’t particularly like Peter—and is pretty sure he hates her in return.

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NaNoWriMo 2017 prep

So it’s the first day of October, which means I start prepping (and writing things down!) for the yearly round of NaNoWriMo, which will kick off on November 1.  Here’s my initial scribblings for this year’s project, which is set in the UNSETIC Files universe and will be called Universe until I get a better idea for a title.

Initial notes

  • Story set in 2015, about a year after a successful crowdfunding campaign brought GreySoft’s Universe game to the masses. Virtual reality integration is an offering of the game starting in December 2014.  The company starts testing full-immersion options starting in September 2015, with a few “gaming cafes” set up in test markets.
  • Peter and Jason Grey are largely estranged from their parents. Marissa has a somewhat better relationship with them at this time, though she respects her brothers’ reasons for distance.
    • Marissa and her husband, Brannon, have a young daughter at the outset of the story (Wynter Marie, born in 2012).
    • Marissa is several years older than the boys and met Brannon while studying abroad in the UK. She half raised the boys, especially Jason, who their parents never seemed to have time for (focusing most of their attention on Peter, who resents them for it).
      • Peter has been in and out of hospitals since childhood. He has a rare neurological disorder that in part inspired the full-immersion technology he developed with Jason and Brannon.
      • Jason and Peter were legally emancipated from their parents when they turned sixteen.
    • The work that went into the Universe game is part of Peter’s doctoral work, supplemented by Brannon and Jason’s expertise.
      • Jason did a brief stint in the Navy before he went back to college. He was finishing his undergraduate work when Universe
    • Elaine and Joslyn are roommates and friends from their days as undergraduates. Joslyn is just finishing up at temping gig (getting ready to start another) and Elaine is doing graduate work.

The Characters

Peter Ezecaius Grey
Elaine Cavanaugh
Jason Grey
Joslyn Ballard
Marissa Grey
Brannon Marsden

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UNSETIC Files: Lost and Found – Chapter 2 (original draft)

At the end of Bering Songs and Silence, Brigid O’Connell makes a fateful phone call–and sets in motion a series of events that neither she nor her new partner, Tim McConaway, can predict.
What follows is the draft of Chapter 2 of Lost and Found, one of the UNSETIC Files.  I’ll be releasing the first couple of drafted chapters for free of this project and a some others through patreon, tumblr, and here with the possibility of releasing the full draft for patrons later–we’ll see what happens.
Lost and Found is a story told from the point of view of Alisa “AJ” McConaway, fledgling mage, anthropologist, and a team leader in UNSETIC’s Portal Corps.
I look forward to your feedback.  Happy reading!

Two

Uncle Chris was climbing out of his SVU as I pulled up and into the circle drive in front of the house. He took one look at my face and came over to the driver’s side of my Jeep, his eyes narrowing.

“What’s the matter?”

“I’ll tell you inside. I have to pack.”

His brows lifted as I climbed out of my car and headed for the front door. He was wearing dress shoes. There must have been a board meeting or something today that I’d forgotten or that he hadn’t mentioned. “Pack?” my uncle echoed. “Where are you going now?”

“Virginia,” I said as we walked into the foyer. “I got a phone call today and I’ve got to get there tonight.”

“I can arrange—”

“I’m driving,” I said. “It’s going to take that long to get my head on straight.” I turned toward him, throat tightening around a lump. “Tim’s alive.”

“We knew that,” Chris said. “We knew that eighteen months ago after you and Kate came back.”

“He’s in Virginia, Uncle Chris. Brigid O’Connell called me and Tim was with her. He’s alive and he’s here, he’s back. I have to find out what’s going on.”

Continue reading “UNSETIC Files: Lost and Found – Chapter 2 (original draft)”

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Original Draft – UNSETIC Files: Lost and Found – Chapter 1 sneak peek

At the end of Bering Songs and Silence, Brigid O’Connell makes a fateful phone call–and sets in motion a series of events that neither she nor her new partner, Tim McConaway, can predict.

What follows is the draft of Chapter 1 of Lost and Found, one of the UNSETIC Files. I’ll be releasing the first couple of drafted chapters for free of this project and a couple others with the rest of the drafts appearing as patron-only posts at my Patreon site. This is early-access, since Lost and Found will be released in ebook and print form once it’s complete and edited.

Lost and Found is a story told from the point of view of Alisa “AJ” McConaway, fledgling mage, anthropologist, and a team leader in UNSETIC’s Portal Corps.

I look forward to your feedback.  Happy reading!

Become a Patron!

Continue reading “Original Draft – UNSETIC Files: Lost and Found – Chapter 1 sneak peek”

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UNSETIC Files special preview/extra – Brigid, Tim, and AJ after the end of Bering Songs and Silence

UNSETIC Bering Songs and Silence tiny imageIf you haven’t read Bering Songs and Silence, you might want to stop reading right here and now and go do that before moving on.  Of course, folks who are currently reading The Man Who Made Monsters over at LP Loudon’s site will already know that something must have happened in the aftermath of Bering Songs and Silence, which is the story of the first mission for UNSETIC that Brigid O’Connell and Tim McConaway embarked on together.

Spoilers (and a preview of an upcoming piece, Lost and Found) below the cut.

Continue reading “UNSETIC Files special preview/extra – Brigid, Tim, and AJ after the end of Bering Songs and Silence“

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The Court of Twelve and the UNSETIC Files

Everyone who’s a fan of the UNSETIC Files–or just Tim McConaway and Brigid O’Connell, or James McCullough, or Ridley Thys–can thank LP Loudon at this point, loudly and often.  For the people who don’t know (possibly because they haven’t read Between Fang and Claw), LP Loudon is the brain behind the Hunters (remember Mara, Galahad, and of course, David Tierney?) and one of my longtime roleplaying buddies and, in the past few years, writing partners.  There had been plans between the two of us for some time to interweave my UNSETIC Files stories and her Hunterverse stories, but we’d never quite talked about when that might happen–it was always pushed out into some nebulous future time frame.

As of this past weekend, that time has already started.

I’ll be collaborating with LP on her Court of Twelve serial, The Man Who Made Monsters and with its subsequent sequels.  Monsters is set more than a decade after the stories where we first meet many of the UNSETIC characters that will be appearing in the serial (roughly 2022–we meet Jim McCullough in 2006 with Between Fang and Claw, Tim McConaway, Kate Berkshire, and AJ McConaway in 2008 with The Measure of Dreams, Ridley Thys in 2009 with What Angels Fear, and Brigid O’Connell in 2010 with Bering Songs and Silence), but not to worry!  I still have very definite plans to fill in the gap of time left between those initial appearances and Monsters, and future works will be written with the knowledge that The Man Who Made Monsters is out in the world and that people just might be curious about how and when certain things come to pass.

UNSETIC’s debut in The Man Who Made Monsters is currently set for July 23.