Preamble (you can skip this) /r/plotholes is one of my least favorite subreddits, mostly because there simply aren’t that many plotholes in popular films and books. What the sub gets filled with instead, as often pointed out by commenters there, are questions that seek explanation or clarification of the plot, or questions that point out […]
Serial Writing, An FAQ
What’s serial fiction? Serial fiction is any form of fiction that’s published serially, rather than all at once. Technically speaking, any long series of books is serial fiction, but here, it mostly means something that’s put out chapter-by-chapter, and usually written that way as well. This practice is seeing a resurgence in the web era, but […]
Worth the Candle, Ch 205: A Bloody Mess
I wished that I had Grak’s temporal plate, because I wanted time to think, not just about what was going on, but about what I knew. Pinno had said that the entity had acted like Doris until they reasoned with it, and if it was acting like Doris because it was Doris, then that meant she could be reasoned […]
Worth the Candle, Ch 204: Open Veins
As it turned out, Star Doris had been telling the truth, and we weren’t far from where the blood mages had been doing their thing. Any normal member polity of the Empire of Common Cause would have mandated that high-level research and engineering take place far from a center of population, and this wasn’t just […]
Worth the Candle, Ch 203: Where the Streets Run Red
“So what’s the murders per capita in this shithole?” asked Arthur, giving me a goofy grin. “Uh, pretty low,” I said. “If you’re comparing it to real life, it would be staggeringly low.” He frowned at me. “The way it was described to us, it was supposed to be a place where the gutters ran […]
Worth the Candle, Ch 202: Star Pupil
We were given our own room while the Dorises secured us a star mage to teach me. It was bare bones but functional, and Grak had us warded almost as soon as the door was closed. “So,” Amaryllis said to Raven. “Tell us what we’re walking into.” Raven shrugged. “Based on what they said, nothing […]
Worth the Candle, Ch 201: The Aviary
Going into Captain Blue-in-the-Bottle’s exclusion zone was a legal gray zone. Amaryllis and I were dual citizens, with one country being an imperial non-member and the other being a full member in good standing. It wasn’t strictly illegal to cross into the Necrolaborem EZ, but it was illegal to provide aid and comfort, to engage in trade, […]