Odds Without Ends — Avarice, Pt. 3

Time at last for Part 3 of Avarice. If you’re just joining the story, you can find Part 1 and Part 2 right here at the Oktopod blog. As a quick refresher, Matthias Cole has returned from the wilds to a walled city. It was a place he narrowly escaped a few years earlier, and he would never have returned if his infant daughter hadn’t gotten sick. Now he’s back inside and working for the omnipresent company that runs it all.

Let’s dig in.

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Odds Without Ends — Avarice, Pt. 2

Last week, we took a quick look at the rather mysterious beginning of Avarice, an unfinished biopunk novel. We’ll dig a little deeper into the world in today’s entry, learning more about the place’s methods and madness.

Buckle up…

Odds Without Ends — Avarice, Pt. 1

This week’s dead (maybe comatose?) project is a dystopian biopunk novel called Avarice. I started this in the heady days of 2009, back when I was still actively trying to get Stars Rain Down published. Man, what a crazy time to be alive. It was the very next thing I worked on after Stars, and I’d hoped to finish it later that year. Seems that didn’t happen.

It even had a tentative cover design.

The story (like most dystopian fiction) was intended as an examination of current day issues, specifically wealth inequality and the ascendance of monopolistic corporate power. The setting was somewhat inspired by Frank Herbert’s The Dosadi Experiment, a wonderfully interesting and excellent novel which I’d just finished reading, mated up with a large number of peculiar ideas I’d had floating around for some time.

Although I refer to it as biopunk, I should probably note that I haven’t ever read any books in that subgenre; it just seems like the most appropriate description for what I had. I don’t rightfully know what else to call a story set in a dense urban environment, overrun by corporate powers and rife with the gruesome products of genetic engineering… so, apologies to any biopunk fans if what I have here doesn’t quite fit.

Alrighty. Time to lift the curtain.

Odds Without Ends — Vermilion

Welcome back, my friends. In this week’s Odds Without Ends, we’re taking a look at a story I started last year called Vermilion. The idea first came to me in the winter of 2011 shortly after my father died. I was downtrodden and wanted to work on something simpler and less complex. The word Vermilion struck me as a solid title, and pieces started to slot into place.

The premise was wonderfully simple: a forest elf wanders into town and slays a dragon. So simple. I had a strong image of the world and I was excited to get started. That’s right about when things went off track.

The plan (and that strong image) changed considerably as I compiled notes. Instead of a medieval setting, I drifted in a pseudo-Western direction, creating frontier lands peopled by miners, farmers and outlaws. Elves became native tribesmen, and the story adopted an undercurrent of racial tension.

Let’s take a look at how that turned out, shall we?

Odds Without Ends – I Vanish Pt. 4

Today’s selection of unfinished fiction is the last stop for my troubled detective novel, I Vanish. In it, we learn a bit more about Mr. Biswell and his troubles with the supernatural, then Ethan heads off on the job before the whole thing comes to an abrupt stop.

If you missed the previous entries, you can find them here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

Let’s dive in, shall we?

Odds Without Ends — I Vanish, Pt. 3

Wednesday, Thursday… what’s the difference, right? In any event, welcome back. Today, we’ll be taking a look at the third part of I Vanish, an urban horror/dark fantasy detective thing-a-ma-doodad. This section rejoins our protagonist in the present where we begin to see how dour his life has become, and what that’s done to his outlook (hint: it’s not too great).

If you missed the previous two parts, you can find them here: I Vanish Pt. 1 & I Vanish Pt. 2

All caught up? Good. Let’s roll.