Re: A moment of stuckness
- From: D Marshall <diem@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 19 Aug 2006 14:32:02 +0100
In article <s8lz5RXT0w5EFwlw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
lookinsig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx says...
1) Eternal
6.5k words so far
A science fiction novel about _eternals_ centered on a main character
whose current calling is to hunt down and 'vault' others of his kind who
have gone mad. (They separate the head from the body for a couple of
hundred years and give the heads some pretty intense psychotherapy in
the hope that they can reconnect and release them again.) (Our hero
fears he might eventually go the same way as his targets, but he's
keeping that to himself.) He rescues another eternal who has managed to
get herself executed for supporting the wrong side in a civil war on a
rim planet... at least they've gone through the motions but she's not
dead, of course. He finds he can't get rid of her because he's too mean
to pay her med bills when he delivers her to safety. (Why pay all that
when she'll heal eventually anyway, right?) There are some pretty neat
alien flying mounts in here, called darriya. They are scaly quadrupeds -
about the size of a skinny horse with wings. They have claws, hunt and
eat meat. They are telepathic (between themselves only) and speak in
broken English. They are very formal when you first meet them but have a
sense of humour. They contract to carry riders - for pay.
I'm still searching for a maguffin for this one. A hunt for a mad
criminal mastermind, maybe?
2) Quest
15.5k words so far
A quest novel which brings together seven disparate individuals. No, not
the elf, the magician, the beauty, the swordsman, the coward, the thief
and the hero, but an ex royal bodyguard who failed in his duty to
protect his sovereign and got his whole troop executed for that failure;
a gypsy witch with a disfiguring wine-dark birthmark and more gumption
than power; an assassin, borderline sociopath, with a truly horrific
background of childhood abuse; a middle aged motherly widow who has lost
not only her husband, but all her children (some dead, some left); a
retired soldier who never expected to live long enough to be unemployed
and is looking for a quest that'll probably kill him; a scholar and his
student hounded out of their university for their homosexual
partnership. The quest: to restore the Light of the World - a magical
weather controlling device which keeps life-threatening and
civilisation-threatening weather patterns at bay.
There are all sorts of convoluted links in this which I find juicy. The
assassin hates the homosexuals because he was horribly abused as a
pretty-boy apprentice (he killed his master and escaped). It was the
assassin who killed the bodyguard's monarch and caused all his troop to
be executed (nothing personal, just a job) and the bodyguard is going to
find this out at some point. The gypsy witch's powers are never anything
they can use, but she's perceptive and smart - and she knows about the
maguffin. The motherly woman is probably going to become leader at some
point because she's the only one they don't all hate. The gypsy witch
Can't you include the carnivorous horse beasties in with the quest? I
like your characters so far but I'm partial to nasty beasties.
Otherwise the first two have appeal to me, though as I don't read a huge
amount of fantasy I suppose my opinion doesn't really count.
--
Diem Marshall
.
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