I'm still working on Siblings of the Shroud. Once it is done, we are through with the history set-up, I think -- we'll have the genesis of the art, and then the school, and how they both work later is laid out in The 97th Step.I had a thought recently. It might be amusing to revisit Dirisha and Geneva in later years, and deal with their son, when he goes to help his father with the appearance of some old/new enemies. Said father, of course, being the character Sleel, who knows that his old friends have a child -- only he doesn't know that he's the kid's father ...
How could this be? Well, I set up a bedroom sequence with Dirisha, Geneva, and Sleel at the end of The Albino Knife, and unbeknownst to Sleel, the women, thinking even then that they might someday want a child together, decided they could do a lot worse than Sleel as a donor, so they saved some of his sperm against the day they might want to use it. Stuck it into a freezer and went on about their business.
Sleel recalls his part of this carnal event fondly in Black Steel, but doesn't know about the sequel.
A few years after that, Dirisha and Geneva decided it was time to have a baby, and they flipped a coin to see who would carry the child, whose name will be "Gerard." (For those of you with gaps in your memories, "Gerard Repe" was the pseudonym Sleel used to write bestselling-novels before he became a Matador.)
A short scene:
Kee Wu opened the door and got a better look at the young man standing there.
"Fem Wu," he said. "I'm Gerard Zuri-Echt." He smiled.
She stared. "Jesu damn," she finally managed, her voice full of wonder.
From behind her, Sleel said, "What? Who is it babe?"
Wu smiled at the young man. She knew the names, of course. Knew who his mothers were. But she couldn't look at him and not know who his father was.
She laughed. "Come say hello, Sleel. Your old friends Dirisha and Geneva have sent you a surprise ..."
Be a kind of nasty trick to play on Sleel, but smoothing that out will be part of the fun. Don't even have a working title yet, but I'm going to noodle around with the notion some and see if anything else comes of it ...
Dirisha and Geneva's kid? That would be awesome. Dirisha was always one of my favorite characters from the Matador series, and this news coupled with this link to a list of
ReplyDeleteFormidable Females (which Dirisha is on) brought back some good memories of the books, which I may need to re-read soon.
Shiny! Look forward to seeing what gets added to the story with this one sir.
ReplyDeleteI love it, glad to see that Siblings isn't the end of the journey.
ReplyDeleteAnd Sleel being one of my favorite of your creations, I've always wondered how life was treating him.
And then there's always Bork and Veate's son.....
I was thinking about Bork's son, too! An "albino giant" would be a very interesting character to play with, particularly with the different aspects you described within Bork's and Veate's characters!
ReplyDeleteI think Drisha and Geneva's kid would be awesome and then to show up out of the blue to Sleel would be a lot of fun. There is a lot of potential in that.
ReplyDeleteMy credit cube is ready to purchase it! (Why are you reading this? Shouldn't you be writing?)
ReplyDeleteI see another great read on the horizen!
ReplyDeleteHeck - after that one, throw in some AP and HE Spetsdod darts and ..... "Death came for" - the Predators....It would be better than the most recent Predator movies - including the new one - it was better and had some good stuff but not enough - need a better writer/writers - hint. I still think Prey you did with your Daughter would make into a real good movie - and it wasn't one of the longer ones - hollywood should be able to work with that without chopping it all to heck. Have you had any bites on that one?
Now that special effects has caught up to a lot of the futures you've helped us envision it would be fun to see some movies finally made based on your books. Good Luck.
...or horizon.
ReplyDeleteWonderful news!
ReplyDeleteObvious issues aside, things I'm curious about include:
- the longevity drug --- how does its imminent arrival affect society?
- why are the Zonn the only other sapient race which has inhabited this portion of the galaxy which humanity is in? Presumably humanity has filled up all of the habitable / useful planets /systems of one arm (anyone have handy details on how much volume that his? how many systems? What the percentage of habitable systems would need to be for ~100 human worlds) and space beyond is empty / devoid of planets --- until the next arm over --- any deep space exploration going on?
- how much human effort is necessary to build a wheel world? Once one is built, how much maintenance does it require? How does one qualify to live on one? (something like the ``station-share'' of Cherryh's _Downbelow Station_?
William
That's so awesome! I'm with Nataraj- get to writing!
ReplyDeleteWilliam --
ReplyDeleteThis being space opera, I don't get too much into the details of things like the nuts and bolts of wheelworlds. If you want to see how Reaves and I tackled that kind of thing, dig around in the used book stores for copies of Hellstar and Dome, which have a little more science in them.
The Zonn are the only other intelligence species humans have evidence of in the Milky Way. It's a quiet neighborhood, and I did that because I didn't want aliens, only people and their variants. Makes it easier.
With plenty of room, longevity isn't a problem, humans can spread out, and the age thing becomes relative. People can have a long adulthood, and the leading causes of death become accidents, suicide, and murder, once most diseases get to be curable. (I dealt with that in Spindoc and The Forever Drug ...)
Black Steel was the first of your book I ever read. It caused me to go out and buy the earlier books in that series, which caused you to become my favorite author.
ReplyDeleteIt also made Sleel my favorite character.
So I would like to first say, Shiny. and secondly Thanks! The thought of even more books to look forward to in the matador setting Makes this day a happy one.
That's just a little mean, dropping a kid on him like that. :) Sounds like a potential rollercoaster ride. I look forward to the continuation of the Matador series.
ReplyDeleteI LOVE IT! ! !
ReplyDelete...and he might have to be introduced to his half-sibling.
ReplyDeleteLet's see...
ReplyDelete"Death came to him from his blood. Well, not so much death, but certainly a surprise."
I'm looking forward to Siblings of the Shroud.
ReplyDeleteSome vaguely related feedback... I tried to get my library to order the audiobook of The Musashi Flex and the buyers here are reluctant because of the relatively high - $90, though I pointed them at Amazon at $65 and change - price. I thought I'd mention it because if other libraries or individuals react the same way, the price point might be a little too high. For what it's worth...