Original Fiction from Atomic Anxiety Press: Adventures of the Five and Harpsichord & the Wormhole Witches

For your perusal, I have several original fiction collections now available in electronic format for the Kindle and through booksellers everywhere:

1. HARPSICHORD & THE WORMHOLE WITCHES – A Novel of the Deep
Available in paperback for US $11, and the Kindle edition is available for $2.99. HARPSICHORD is also available for a free borrow for Amazon Prime members.

Ever date a guy whose mom thought you weren’t good enough for him? Yes? Then you have something in common with Harpsichord.

Ever have an ex-boyfriend’s mom pay to have your classmates attack you, drug you, put you on a prison ship, and exile you to the far reaches of space where you fall in with a bunch of escaped convicts, become the enemy of a band of witches, fight living shadows and genocidal robots, and get attacked by nightmarish creatures born in the cooling chaos at the origin of the universe? No? Then you have nothing in common with Harpsichord.

Exiled to the Deep, Harp is manipulated and used by those who want to turn her enhanced abilities into a weapon of war. After her prison ship explodes, Harp is rescued by Simon, an ex-Secret Service femme fatale exiled for assassinating a world leader, and captured by Dash, a roguish bounty hunter hired to bring them to the Gulag. Pulling all their strings is the Warden, a man with designs on turning his prison population into an army. He wants Harp as his showpiece, but she just wants to get home and settle up with a vengeful ex-boyfriend and his psychotic mom.

Preferably with lots of punching.

Seems like a lot for one soul to handle, but Harp’s gonna learn this is just another day in the Deep.

And here’s a link to a very positive review of HARPSCHORD & THE WORMHOLE WITCHES from RevolutionSF.com!

2. ADVENTURES OF THE FIVE: THE COMING OF FROST – A Kid’s Novel

Available in paperback for US $20 and on the Kindle for US $2.99.

Atomic Anxiety’s flagship production is an all-ages tale of five furry friends trying to stop an evil human from conquering the fantasy realm of Wonderland 31.

Thirty years ago, Johnson Frost was just a kid from the Real who got lost and ended up in the Fantasy, where he was to meet his destiny by saving the Wonderland 31. When it was time to go home, however, Johnson refused, hiding in the mountains where he helped the Yetis battle the Nutcracker Army for control of Wonderland. Eventually defeated and exiled back into our world, the once wide-eyed kid grew into a bitter adult with dreams of making himself king!

In the present, a new generation of kids visit Wonderland 31. Farm the Half-Wolverine, Aurora the Fox, Jasper the Porcupine, Flake the Rabbit, and Notter the Otter find the entrance while exploring abandoned miner’s tunnels inside the Western Mountain. They encounter a world of Nutcrackers and Yetis, of Marshmallow Bogs and Gingerbread Castles, and learn that Frost is coming back to conquer Wonderland with his Army of Invasives!

It’s up to the Five to stop him. Ignored by their parents and the Meadow’s Elders Council, the Five embark on the most dangerous adventure of their young lives to save both their home and a world they only just discovered!

Atomic Anxiety on Twitter

We’re now on Twitter. By which I mean, I’m now on Twitter. If you’re interested in following, I’m at @mark_bousquet. I won’t just be talking about Doctor Who and Twin Peaks and movies, but anything and everything.

Except politics. I really don’t like talking about politics.

Whales, though. I’m big on whales.

JACKLIGHTERS: From “The 13th Jacobin” to “Debutant”

This is the second in a series of posts about the editing process of my “lost” short story collection, JACKLIGHTERS: PEACE IN OUR TIME. Read earlier posts by clicking here.

JACKLIGHTERS: PEACE IN OUR TIME is what I call a “short story novel,” because it’s presented as a series of connected short stories inside a larger collection. The stories can be read on their own, but they also inform one another – a small character in one story might be the star of another – and all of the stories work towards informing the collection’s signature piece. This is the style of writing I used in THE COMING OF FROST, and I quite like it. In fact, even though JACKLIGHTERS will see the light of day post-FROST, I actually wrote it prior to the FROST.

To quickly recap, I wrote the JACKLIGHTERS stories back in spring/summer 2007 and then sat on them because I wasn’t totally thrilled with them, and then “lost” them during my move to Reno, and recently discovered them. I’ve decided this is my next project, even though they need quite a bit of work, and thought I’d write about this big rewrite process.

The first story in the collection is called “The 13th Jacobin.” I say “was” because it’s not called that anymore. Now, it’s called “Debutant” and the journey from “Jacobin” to “Debutant” involved what would more accurately be called a reworking instead of a rewriting, because it was far more extensive than I had anticipated.

Let’s start with the particulars:

“Jacobin” is roughly 9,500 words spread out over 11 scenes. “Debutant is roughly 11,500 words spread out over 12 scenes.

“Jacobin” is about new Academy (the finest military college on Earth in 2258) graduate Kim Ott’s declaration to Freedom (the Academy’s head military instructor) that she wants to be a Jacobin, which is basically the Earth Government’s version of Double-0 operatives from the James Bond series. Kim has been engaged in a long-standing sexual relationship with a current female Jacobin, and even though Jacobins are not allowed to reveal their status, Kim is so clever she’s figured it out. She’s blindsided when she finds out her lover is sleeping around. Freedom sends her to Bluecastle, Indiana to interrogate an operative of the Kuroshio empire (an underwater kingdom in the Pacific), and she is rewarded with status as the 13th Jacobin. She continues to see her lover, despite her cheating.

“Debutant” is about new Academy graduate Kim Hayt being drafted by Freedom (who now works solo missions for the Government and has nothing to do with the Academy) to come work for him. He charges her with uncovering why the Kuroshio government has set up “Conversation Offices” in a seemingly random patter around the globe. Kim discovers that there’s a discrepancy between the list of locations Freedom gives her and the official list Government intel has. She further discovers a link between Freedom, a demon princess, and a Kuroshio operative which potentially makes him a traitor. She goes to Durmond, Indiana to interrogate an operative of the Kuroshio empire and dig into this link, where she discovers the truth of the link and that Freedom is a traitor – but perhaps not in a negative manner. He asks her to join and offers her a new mission to steal chemicals in Tokyo.

Both stories involve the use of a non-linear chronology, bouncing back and forth along Kim’s timeline. I really like this storytelling method, but so far only my contribution to HOW THE WEST WAS WEIRD, VOLUME 2 has employed this style in print.

Both stories start at the Texas Governor’s Mansion. Kim is fifteen and there for a ceremony to honor the passing of her father, who was a big shot Admiral in the Navy.

Both stories involve going to small town Indiana to interrogate a Kuroshio religious figure.

From there, though, the stories are significantly different. Kim is an intelligent rookie agent in both stories, but she’s gone from being someone who knows exactly what she wants (to become a Jacobin and avenge her father’s assassination by Kuroshio operatives) only to have that belief undone to someone who doesn’t know where she fits in the world, and then is given a purpose. In both instances, Freedom is the catalyst for that change, but he’s gone from someone who simply tells her something to putting her in a position to figure it out on her own.

In “Jacobin,” I felt like Kim had gone too far by the end of the story

I don’t really enjoy writing action scenes, but I’ve beefed up the action from “Jacobin” to “Debutant.” In the first story I basically skip past Kim’s capture of Ohaito (the Kuro operative) to get right to the interrogation, which is more interesting to me because verbal spats are more enjoyable to write than physical ones for me. For “Debutant,” I paid far greater attention to the lead-in to the interrogation, showing Kim prepping in Australia and teamed with two fellow operatives in Indiana.

My thought process for doing this was to give Kim a greater arc in the story; as the lead-in story to this collection, “Jacobin/Debutant” needs to establish this world for the reader. JACKLIGHTERS takes place in the years 2258-2261, but between our present and theirs, there has been a worldwide plague that lasted nearly a century, the revelation of two underwater kingdoms (Aegea in the Atlantic and Kuroshio in the Pacific) and the presence of demons living underground. The nations of the world have united to form a global government. It’s a complex place and this story has to set the tone. I feel like I’ve done a much better job in “Debutant” at laying that information in to enhance the story without having to resort to a big infodump.

I’m not entirely thrilled with the story, yet. The climax involves a lot of standing around and talking between Freedom and Kim, and I’m thinking I should one last fight scene. Or, in lieu of a fight scene, I’ll need to do a better job setting up all of the revelations that come out during that sequence.

One last change – JACKLIGHTERS is designed to be a superhero/political thriller/soap opera but I was very hesitant to actually have superheroes in the story – by which I mean costumes and code names and secret identities. In this round, I’ve split the difference; there are costumes, but they’re military grade and functional, not bright and colorful. There are code names, too, but no secret identities. There are no masks. I’m interested in writing about characters like the Howling Commandos, James Bond, and Jason Bourne rather than Spider-Man, Batman, and Daredevil.

On the whole, I’m very pleased with the changes. I’ll take a few days off, then come back to it for another polish, and hopefully then I can move on to the next story.

“Jacobin”