I'm actually writing! And posting!

I am currently writing a short story submission for an anthology called Dead Rush, a collection of horror/western short stories.

My story features ancient spirits disturbed from their rest when treasure seekers invade their once great city.

Researching the Indian tribes and old towns of the mid-west has been really interesting, and I'm having fun putting it all together.

I've got until Feb. 28th to get it done. Better get back to work!

On a side note, I posted on Greg Bear's website to let him know how much I love his books, particularly Halo: Cryptum and Halo: Primordium. I really must write up proper reviews on here to truly show my appreciation, although I think I'll have to read them both again first!

Lifetimes Upon Lifetimes

I haven't posted anything in a while. Mostly because my life kind of fell apart, and I've been busy trying to avoid picking up the pieces. Today's post is a short story I wrote for a player run competition on the EVE Online forum. Its called Lifetimes Upon Lifetimes. Here it is in its entirety:

Lifetimes Upon Lifetimes

Lifetimes upon lifetimes, I had never felt the cold of space, but now the chill of the void is my universe.

The feeds are all malfunctioning. Occasionally I get brief glimpses of cartwheeling wreckage, or dim sensor echoes, but most of the time its just dark. And cold. I miss the stars.

Most of the pod's systems are down, either fried or in emergency standby. It must have been a one in a million shot to bypass the multiple redundant safety systems of my pod, the self-destructs, the transfer system. The Jovian's work true wonders with technology, but even they are fallible it would seem.

I wonder what true death is like. I've died so many times before, only to awaken to a new life, a new body just the way I like it. I wonder what I will awaken to this time. If I will awaken at all...

Time passes slowly in the darkness. I think I'm drifting in and out of consciousness, but I can't be sure. It all seems the same. Occasionally I glimpse something out of the corner of my eye, but my gaze disturbs the pond and the ripples scare the fish away. I've never seen a pond, not a real one. They say that holoreels just aren't as good as the real thing. I tried to access my holoreels, but the uplink isn't working. But if the uplink isn't working how did the fish get out?

I think the ship links are feeding back into my neural net. I can feel parts of the ship, right on the edges of my awareness, but I know that its gone. Its gone. Millions of ISK gone in a puff of vaporized metals and broken dreams. Its going to take days of mission running to make enough ISK to buy and fit another one. I might fill the high power slots with afterburners, then I'll be travelling in style. Wait, that doesn't make sense... These fish keep distracting me. They don't want me to know that the medical support systems are failing. Cheeky devils.

I think I can see a ship. Its salvaging the wrecks. Damn it, I can't get a weapons lock. I can't warp out either. None of the ships systems are responding. It could be Sanshas trying to eat my brains, or Guristas trying to steal my holoreels. I won't let them take my fish. This pond and everything in it belongs to me!

Its really getting quite warm here. I just love the feeling of the sand between my toes, the gentle embrace of the summer sun, its so relaxing. Not a care in the world. It is a little too bright though. Its kind of hurting my eyes. I should have bought a pair of those Nightstalker Goggles.

For a second there I thought I was trapped in a broken pod, slowly freezing to death while the automated systems desperately fought to keep me alive by pumping me full of drugs and the glitching neural interface cooked my brain. What a horrible thought. I've really got to stop watching bad holoreel horrors.

The beach stretches for kilometres in all directions. The cool perspiration on the side of my drink reminds me of something, but the thought eludes me like those wily fish. Sometimes when I sit and watch the gentle waves I wonder if its all just a dream, some kind of elaborate fantasy. But then I luxuriate in the feeling of the heat of the sun upon my skin, take a sip of my icy cold... Quafe... and I know, deep down, that a life so real, so perfect, couldn't possibly be just an illusion.

I'm so lucky to be one of the chosen few, a Capsuleer, an immortal. There is always something new to explore, always something exciting just around the corner, and sometimes what you find is so wondrous, so amazing, that eternal life just isn't enough. This beach, this thin strand of sand along the edge of this great ocean is such a place.

The fish jump and splash in the water and I know they feel the same way too.

Lifetimes upon lifetimes, I've never felt so alive, and now the warmth of the sun fills my universe.

It can also be found in its original form here:

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=86146#post86146

Busy gamerfiction.com line up (that I may or mayn't get around to reviewing)

I am currently reading my awesome signed copy of Enforcer: The Shira Calpurnia omnibus by Matthew Farrer.

Next on my list:

Nemesis (Horus Heresy) by James Swallow

Retribution (Mass Effect) by Drew Karpyshyn

Fall of Reach (Halo) by Eric Nylund (new revised edition)


Things are slow, as per usual, but this time its not just laziness! I submitted a short story to the Black Library: Keep and Strengthen Us, We Who Fight for Thee by yours truly, Matt Nielsen! The tale of a Guardsman caught between the machinations of some of the most dangerous forces in the galaxy.

I'm going to TRY to post more on this blog as part of my new writing regimen. But yeah, bear in mind the abject laziness.

Path of the Warrior

Sometimes being a sculptor just doesn't cut it. When the arts aren't enough sometimes you just have to take up a chainsword, and take on the Aspect of the Striking Scorpion. For the long lived Eldar, a race for whom indulgence is the path to damnation, learning to control emotions is a vital part of life. When Korlandril's world falls apart around him he finds himself suffused with impossible anger, his only solution: the Path of the Warrior by Gav Thorpe.

This Burning Life

The second novel based on the EVE Online massively-multiplayer cut-throat spaceship and economy simulator, This Burning Life by Hjalti Daníelsson takes the opposite approach to the universe from last years EVE novel, The Empyrean Age by Tony Gonzales (Pb $14.95).

This Burning Life starts right at the bottom of the EVE universe’s food chain, with a man named Drem and a girl named Ralea.

Drem is an ordinary guy, living an ordinary life. Well, alright, he lives in a domed colony on a low-orbiting spaceport moon, and is a citizen of a religious fundamentalist faction obsessed with blood. Drem’s relatively ordinary life is cut short by a rampaging Capsuleer, a human who through cybernetic enhancement is able to directly interface his mind with a spaceship, and through cloning is effectively immortal, his consciousness being downloaded to a new clone in the event of his death. Drem survives the attack on his colony, but loses everything. Consumed by a desire for revenge, Drem seeks out the militant wing of his people, the Blood Raiders, and engages in an impossible quest for vengeance, only to be pulled from the claws of oblivion at the last second by the most unlikely of saviors, and given a fresh start. But will the benevolence and good-will of his new benefactors cure Drem of his lust for revenge? Or give him just the tools he needs to accomplish it?

On the other side of the New Eden star cluster, the hedonistic excess of two Gallente mission agents ends in murder. The power of the wealthy and prestigious profession of liaising with Capsuleers, and the guilt and depression of the responsibility for those dead at the ‘hands’ of her clients, drives Ralea to the darker side of society. When things spiral out of control, Ralea’s friend Heci drags her out of both her personal hell, and the entire Gallente Federation. Ralea and Heci travel the cluster, in an effort to both evade detection by Federation forces and to find new meaning in their lives, but it seems everywhere they go they run in to more corruption and hypocrisy, and that they can never quite escape the reach of their home nation. Is there a true purpose out there for Ralea and Heci, or are they chasing ghosts in a universe riddled with conflict and prejudice?

This Burning Life explores the lives and motivations of the little people in EVE Online’s society, detailing the lives of the everyman in both the high security space of the four empires, as well as the lives of those living under the pirate factions that stalk the low security regions of New Eden. The book is an intriguing open window on the realm of the secondary characters, not just in EVE, but in media in general. This is a book about the extras, the stand-ins and the background characters. This is a book about the characters that work hard behind the scenes to give us the worlds in which the ‘main’ characters operate.

To quote Eldon Tyrell “The light that burns twice as bright burns for half as long - and you have burned so very, very brightly”

Helljumpers

Helljumpers, the Orbital Drop Shock Troopers of the 105st division, go into battle feet first and red hot, cutting through the alien Covenant like the proverbial knife. But when a distress call from an archaeological site uncovers a massive Covenant operation, can the best of the best take on the galaxies worst?

Eisenhorn Omnibus

Eisenhorn Omnibus by Dan Abnett

When heresy breaks out across the Helican Sub-Sector it’s up to Gregor Eisenhorn to track down the source of the corruption, and the man with the blank eyes who haunts his dreams. Will Eisenhorn be able to defeat the forces of chaos and the xenos threat? Or is the power of the Inquisition insufficient to save the hardworking citizens of the Imperium?