URGENT, for long-time readers: Temporal Distortion Event, Level 9. Extent and Duration of Wave Unknown. There is no time engineer to monitor. Avatar Entries #12, #13, #14, and #16 have irrevocably changed.

Note: Been reading this serialized long story/novella? Please support a full-time writer. Paypal to vanderworld at hotmail.com—much appreciated! Donations above $21 will entitle you to a free copy of initial anthology or stand-alone book appearance.

Living on a far-distant planet, Doctor Mormeck works for strange beings that might or might not be angels by conducting surveillance across a hundred thousand alt-Earths. Complicating things are a transdimensional race of intelligent komodos wreaking chaos throughout the worlds. When an avatar of Mormeck is sent to a war-torn winter city to investigate a mysterious Presence, the doctor will become embroiled an ever-widening conflict.

Archive is here, Journals of Mormeck, and first entry is here. A full-on 34,000 recap is compiled in one place, here with the entries since easily found in the archive.

I made my way farther and farther East, a Demon within me and angels on my trail. I had a whole century to kill before I could rescue myself but I wanted to be as far from the winter city as fast as possible. I abandoned my idea of traveling incognito and tiny upon tanks or trucks—it took a constant vigilance that made me wary of the Demon somehow breaking containment.

I traveled almost always by night, sometimes as a translucent komodo and sometimes as a human being. I became used to the wandering without a map except the one inside my head, of avoiding cities, towns, and villages. In some ways it was easier because of the war and in others harder. Certain kinds of security were lax and others more vigilant. I watched thousands of soldiers pass by, and as many tanks, from the cover of trees. There were desperate people on the road and off the road, and areas so tightly controlled by Trotsky’s secret police that if not for the lack of young and middle aged men you might not even realize that their country was under attack. Some places held more traces of angels and others fewer. I became wary of single footprints in the snow and the sound of wings and anyone who would meet my stare.

Then the snows got worse, and even I sometimes felt the chill, and beyond that the lack of Pavlov—of someone to talk to. The only thing I could talk to had nothing nice to say.

Avatar, do you like being a lackey for nothing, for no gain of your own? Is it important to you in some way?

I preferred traveling in the komodo form, not the human. Being human took more practice, even just in terms of the number of facial muscles; my mouth always felt sore. Besides, humans were herky-jerky and tic-ridden and repressed and unpredictable. Humans couldn’t smell through their skins, had terrible reflexes, and no tough exoskeleton to compensate or even a mind-shield. I could read their brains like rows of peeled leechee fruit. Humans were sacks of flesh, blood, and shit that flopped around for fifty to ninety years and then fell over dead. I wanted no part of that…but over time I would learn. You can learn anything if you have a century to practice. Almost anything. I could slowly teach a human shell to smell through its skin, for example, but form follows function—the process would be jury-rigging at best, unnatural and awkward.

Tell me, Avatar, do you think you’re anything other than a ghost, an echo? You’re a disposable to Mormeck Mountain as fingernail clippings are to human beings.

And the entire way what was unreconcilable within me would hiss or whisper to weaken my mind even as I contemplated trying to excise it by knife blade anyway just to be rid of it.

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Note: Been reading this serialized long story/novella? Please support a full-time writer. Paypal to vanderworld at hotmail.com—much appreciated! Donations above $21 will entitle you to a free copy of initial anthology or stand-alone book appearance.

Living on a far-distant planet, Doctor Mormeck works for strange beings that might or might not be angels by conducting surveillance across a hundred thousand alt-Earths. Complicating things are a transdimensional race of intelligent komodos wreaking chaos throughout the worlds. When an avatar of Mormeck is sent to a war-torn winter city to investigate a mysterious Presence, the doctor will become embroiled an ever-widening conflict.

Archive is here, Journals of Mormeck, and first entry is here. A full-on 34,000 recap is compiled in one place, here with the entries since easily found in the archive.

I no longer send an avatar to write in the journal on the jungle floor. I write it here, at the heart of me. If Gabriel finds it, he finds me. Thousands or millions of years from now some other Risen species on this planet will find my journal, incomplete, and need to make up the rest of the story themselves. The rest stays with me.

Everything has continued as before, except now I am relegated to watching the endless recurring loop of an alt-Earth where a civilization pushes south from the Arctic. Floating ghost-whale employed as spirit weapons against the pale-skinned invaders eclipse the sun. Psionic walrus riders channel their power through their mounts’ tusks, the power sent out enough to shatter an enemy soldier’s bones into finely-ground dust. The walrus riders chant for focus as they advance and the enemy soldiers ripple and flop into screaming death and the walruses roar from the vibration of the force emanating from their tusks, will never get used to it.

I feel as if my bones have been turned to dust, but I cannot fall, I cannot give in or give up.

(more…)

Note: Been reading this serialized long story/novella? Please support a full-time writer. Paypal to vanderworld at hotmail.com—much appreciated! Donations above $21 will entitle you to a free copy of initial anthology or stand-alone book appearance.

Living on a far-distant planet, Doctor Mormeck works for strange beings that might or might not be angels by conducting surveillance across a hundred thousand alt-Earths. Complicating things are a transdimensional race of intelligent komodos wreaking chaos throughout the worlds. When an avatar of Mormeck is sent to a war-torn winter city to investigate a mysterious Presence, the doctor will become embroiled an ever-widening conflict.

Archive is here, Journals of Mormeck, and first entry is here. A full-on 34,000 recap is compiled in one place, here with the entries since easily found in the archive.

Did you never wonder why the angels would commit genocide against the Remnant across all possible worlds? Did it never cross your mind? said the thing hiding inside the scrap of Remnant hiding inside of me. Never in the history of shrapnel had such a tiny wound caused such profound complications.

the thing hiding inside the scrap of Remnant hiding inside of me would say soon enough, if not just yet.

But I hadn’t wondered. I had taken the angels’ actions as evidence of their arbitrariness, their particularly disengaged form of ethereal evil, as I was coming to see it. I hadn’t known that an entity that had shot into my body riding a tiny piece of metal would come along to tell me my assumption was wrong. I hadn’t thought that I had anything other than a bit of Remnant inside me. But now it became clear that something had come along with the Remnant.

I hadn’t thought that I had anything other than a bit of poor oppressed Remnant inside me. But now it became clear that either something had come along with the Remnant or I had misunderstood something fundamental about the Remnant.

Obvious because a taste like the sour inner lining of a walnut shell permeated my entire being as I stuck like a limpet to that tank headed East—and something surged out from the tiny Remnant fortress inside of me and attacked my brain.

For a millisecond I froze. In another millisecond I had morphed back into a full-sized komodo spasming and thrashing as if my attacker were riding my back. I crashed off the tank into the hard incline alongside, and from scrubland into forest, remembering to switch to invisible mode soon enough that cries of alarm faded into disbelief…and then I was not paying any more attention to the soldiers above. I was raging invisible through the forest, heading for anything that smelled, through the walnut stench, like water. For there was a fire in my brain as my cells fought other cells. Something had attacked me from the Remnant stronghold, that was all I knew, and as the battle raged, my cells snuck out the essence of my consciousness to another part of my body closer to my tail than my head. But still the invader pressed, and came closer to total control. At the maximum moment of tension between intrusion and escape, I ejected my head from my body, left it rolling and hissing and monstrous and horrible while my neck worked at tying off blood flow. It was an egregiously blunt reversal of normal lizard behavior.

(more…)

Note: Been reading this serialized long story/novella? Please support a full-time writer. Paypal to vanderworld at hotmail.com—much appreciated! Donations above $21 will entitle you to a free copy of initial anthology or stand-alone book appearance.

Living on a far-distant planet, Doctor Mormeck works for strange beings that might or might not be angels by conducting surveillance across a hundred thousand alt-Earths. Complicating things are a transdimensional race of intelligent komodos wreaking chaos throughout the worlds. When an avatar of Mormeck is sent to a war-torn winter city to investigate a mysterious Presence, the doctor will become embroiled an ever-widening conflict.

Archive is here, Journals of Mormeck, and first entry is here. A full-on 34,000 recap is compiled in one place, here with the entries since easily found in the archive.

They’ve taken her away from me. They’ve taken her away from me. They’ve taken her away from me. They’ve taken me away from me.

Gabriel came down like a colossus in flames—smashing through the roof of the library where my avatar sat reading love poems, his wings ablaze and the look upon his face hideous. My avatar was flung headlong into a corner, and I experienced a moment of disorientation throughout my Mountain self.

He stood there unable to speak for a moment, teetering and smoldering in his own anger with his head bent down to stare at me. He was enormous, his body taut and muscular, so that with his white robes he looked as if made out of chiseled marble. A burnt hellish scent cut through the air and the aftershock vibration of his presence was like a wave.

Then my link to my surveillance moths cut off. Then my links to visuals and other sense collectors beyond my mountain self. Then there was just me and my link to my avatar. I could see nothing else, hear nothing else, be nowhere else. My avatar and my self might as well have been the same, and with that realization came the irrational fear that if my library avatar died in this moment, I died too.

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(Does this pertain to Mormeck, the writing book, critiques, or all three? With what did it originate, and where will it end up? I’m sure the illustrator, Jeremy Zerfoss, would like to know.)

Writing an online fiction serial like Mormeck as I’ve started working on the heavily visual creative writing book for Abrams, which includes re-reading a lot of my own nonfiction and that of others, while also doing some novel critiques has been an interesting experience. I descend through sedimentary layers throughout the day, adhering to a work schedule that separates out these different elements. But, of course, these disparate ways of engaging with narrative bleed into one another, inform one another, and spark ideas across projects.

For example, the novel critiques combined with the writing book research have made me re-evaluate the idea of distance in Mormeck. I’m more and more convinced that in the final draft there will be no “Stalingrad” but only “the winter city” and that in making the historical specificity more general I will bring into focus and make more specific other elements that are more general now. This is important to a narrative that acknowledges hundreds of alternate realities and inhabits several of them. When there are so many iterations of place and situation, the one observing this is perhaps less concerned with the extent of the deviation and more concerned with the personal relationships within that landscape…since the landscape is in a sense an illusion. This was brought home to me when writing the last avatar scene involving a German general. The fact of using a historical figure in the scene stifled a sense of character for me, even with the option of non-standard deviation. The character became encased in a kind of rigid armor, and indeed the reason he sits so stiff when the avatar reveals himself is not just from fear but also from the author’s inability to imagine any other action for him.

Another thing that becomes clear from most novel critiques is that beginning writers struggle with how to convey information, especially in SF novels, even in later drafts. It is very hard for beginners to layer in exposition, and to make it a knife point that supports the blade of the characters and plot. When doing a serial, this takes a slightly different form, especially since the idea with Mormeck was to take delight in presenting unusual exposition—to in a sense make the exposition tell its own stories, so that even as this telling is pushing forward with the plot-intertwined-with-characters safely inside its whirring horizontal tornado, the circular force of exposition is itself made of narrative too. No, the problem instead is that particular thoughts, feelings, and actions by the characters at times take on a repetitive feel because I think of something too late and must revisit a context in a later scene to express it. Similarly, scenes that should in the final contract are expanded and over-exposed while other scenes are too short, their brevity birthing scenes later to compensate that would themselves be annexed by other scenes.

The writing books I’m re-reading, including one on subtext and another on the nature of influence between writers, help give further clarity to certain critiques, and at the same time in the anecdotes and situations suggest at times sublimation into fiction, the better to be grist for Mormeck, ground down and reformed in a harder, more concentrated form.

Structures that suggest themselves in Mormeck on a physical level in the form of creatures and objects begin to suggest images for the writing book—images that can contain or accommodate transformation from flesh-and-blood into metaphor (sometimes retaining their subtext from Mormeck) or more literal form-skeletons upon which to drap a point.

In some ways, too, the critiques—by requiring me to find alternate ways to say or structure or convey or imply for the betterment of the story—allow me to work out problems to solve in Mormeck on a practice field of sorts, the Mormeck-ghost attaching itself to the critique-novel context and when one is solved, so is the other, and the ghost, healed, releases, to float off to rejoin the rest of Mormeck-in-my-head.

These are imprecise and sometimes strangely heightened ways of talking about influence within one’s own skull, but the point is that I think all of these disparate yet related activities are useful to one another, whereas they could have been disruptive.

Note: Been reading this serialized long story/novella? Please support a full-time writer. Paypal to vanderworld at hotmail.com—much appreciated! Donations above $21 will entitle you to a free copy of initial anthology or stand-alone book appearance.

Living on a far-distant planet, Doctor Mormeck works for strange beings that might or might not be angels by conducting surveillance across a hundred thousand alt-Earths. Complicating things are a transdimensional race of intelligent komodos wreaking chaos throughout the worlds. When an avatar of Mormeck is sent to a war-torn winter city to investigate a mysterious Presence, the doctor will become embroiled an ever-widening conflict.

Archive is here, Journals of Mormeck, and first entry is here. A full-on 34,000 recap is compiled in one place, here with the two entries since here and here.

Such a thin line Pavlov showed me, a kind of fatal smile, that line of the Volga River with the winter city hunched up against it, and against that the pressure of the German assault.

(more…)

Note: Been reading this serialized long story/novella? Please support a full-time writer. Paypal to vanderworld at hotmail.com—much appreciated! Donations above $21 will entitle you to a free copy of initial anthology or stand-alone book appearance.

Living on a far-distant planet, Doctor Mormeck works for strange beings that might or might not be angels by conducting surveillance across a hundred thousand alt-Earths. Complicating things are a transdimensional race of intelligent komodos wreaking chaos throughout the worlds. When an avatar of Mormeck is sent to a war-torn winter city to investigate a mysterious Presence, the doctor will become embroiled an ever-widening conflict.

Archive is here, Journals of Mormeck, and first entry is here. The full-on 34,000 words before this entry is compiled in one place, here–save for the entry before this one, which you can find here.

“Crabapple—your arms are like adroit armadillos scintillating in mists of microscopic levitating rabid monkeys. Your eyes are tidal pools filled with carnivorous cancerous aquatic feline distemper robots that twitch like brine shrimp in a hot pot. Your toes are like cherry tomatoes radiating out across all the lands and squashing what they please. Love, Dupp Thanager.”

(more…)

Note: Been reading this serialized long story/novella? Please support a full-time writer. Paypal to vanderworld at hotmail.com—much appreciated! Donations above $21 will entitle you to a free copy of initial anthology or stand-alone book appearance.

Living on a far-distant planet, Doctor Mormeck works for strange beings that might or might not be angels by conducting surveillance across a hundred thousand alt-Earths. Complicating things are a transdimensional race of intelligent komodos wreaking chaos throughout the worlds. When an avatar of Mormeck is sent to a war-torn winter city to investigate a mysterious Presence, the doctor will become embroiled an ever-widening conflict.

Archive is here, Journals of Mormeck, and first entry is here. The full-on 34,000 words before this entry is compiled in one place, here.

Warily, I returned to Pavlov’s House—the fortified building controlled by Sergeant Yakov Fedotovich Pavlov of the Trotsky-Soviet army. I was much different, of course, even though the avatar that manifested after I ghosted my way stealthily through the defenses, through a door, and then scuttled tiny along the walls of corridors to his office was the same Pavlov had always seen. More of Mormeck Mountain had been flensed away. Less of the giant komodo I came to him as was komodo-ish. And I had a speck of an alien civilization hidden in my body.

As I had avoided pitched battles between German and Soviet tanks in already blasted streets, buildings gutted, smoldering hulks, I had had—in the crisp, cold air, with the blue of the sky a kind of bright smile commenting on the limits of human absurdity—a sort-of epiphany: that I was finally becoming myself, and that I did not yet know what that might mean. I still had my mission, which was now to find my way back to Mormeck Mountain, but at the frontiers of my mind, I could sense outliers of doubt, of lack of purpose, and nothing to replace it.

But whatever it meant, I knew I had to get out of the city, and while I could do that blind, and could flee to any corner of the world, disregarding the intel from the Speck of the Remnant in my body, I preferred to travel to the Far East. A vastness of time and landscape awaited me before my self-rescue, but somehow I needed that. A century was more than enough time to find myself.

Pavlov didn’t seem surprised to see me even though several months had passed, but, then, I had never seen him express surprise over anything. He had perfected the art of receiving information with a stoicism that, while learned, gave him the upper hand in most situations.

But I was surprised to see that standing beside him were Uri and Aleksei, the two soldiers I had saved from the threat of the Remnant outside of their strange domed building. Both of them looked astonished to see their reptilian benefactor again, and not in a good way. They reached for their weapons, but Pavlov barked an order form them to stand down. They did so almost with relief, as if their action had been reflexive and they had no real stomach for the task.

“Body guards?” I asked.

“I am their body guards,” Pavlov said, “after what they saw.”

“The impossible is real?”

“And maybe that, too,” Pavlov said. His face seemed more worn but less wrinkled, as if he had been worn smooth like a stone by the extremity of his situation. His hands showed evidence of thwarted frostbite. He had lost some hair and some had turned gray. From under the table he sat at, I could see his boots were in tatters, bound in cloth. I knew from the history I had seen that the past two months had been the worst of the war for Pavlov’s unit. He could have used a huge, invisible komodo during those dark days. But I had not been there. Though I owed him nothing, really, an odd guilt twisted inside of me.

“It’s good to see you.” And it was. A familiar face, someone I instinctually trusted even though I shouldn’t have trusted anyone.

“It’s an unexpected pleasure,” Pavlov said, with what might have been irony. Uri and Aleksei had unfrozen from their positions against the far wall and Pavlov motioned to them. “Go get tea.” Neither of them moved.

“Tea?”

Pavlov gave a weary smile. “All my vodka goes to the men, along with the local rotgut they make and put in used milk bottles. Now!” And in the strain in his voice ordering his men I saw further evidence of his fatigue.

Neither soldier seemed happy to have to edge by me and out the door, but they did it rather than face Pavlov. I could hear them running down the hall.

“Are they bringing more soldiers?” I asked.

Pavlov grinned. “No. Just tea,” he said with disappointment, either feigned or real. “Only tea. But I am inappropriately curious: what happened to you?”

I thought about answering him. It was a simple question, but one with a complicated answer. What would be gained by giving Pavlov more of a glimpse into the truth of other worlds? Would it assuage his curiosity or simply enflame it? Would it leave him with the nagging sense he had missed something, for as long as he lived?

“I ran into…complications. I almost died. But nothing that happened has any bearing on your situation.”

Pavlov nodded, but said, “Except that you are here again.” His head held at an angle, as if spurring me on: “Complications, and…?”

“As a result, I need to leave the city. I need to head to the Far East. I need to find sanctuary there for a long, long time.”

Uri and Aleksei came back nervously with the tea then, although they seemed to have regained some semblance of control. They shut the door quickly behind them, and Pavlov took over the ritual of preparing the tea, setting out the cups on the table cloth. His hands shook a little bit. I knew he survived this war, I knew he lived a long life after, but it still bothered me to see that.

“I know some people in the Far East,” Pavlov said after a pause. “My family isn’t from there, but friends of the family are. More specifically, I know of a place that you can stay and no one should bother you…so long as you…” He looked me up and down. “You are rather distinctive.”

“I won’t travel in this form.”

“Of course you won’t.” But it was clear from the unexpected scintilla of surprise in his voice that it had not occurred to him that I might manifest as anything as other than a small or large komodo.

He wrote an address on a piece of paper. “The owner of this cottage is missing, presumed dead…It is a lawless place. The Chinese and the Japanese do not respect the border. You may find yourself in another war zone.” Then he stopped writing, looked up at me, scribbled more words. “And this is a postal box where you can reach me now…or after the war.”

I could see it in his eyes: Pavlov wouldn’t risk giving me his home address, couldn’t know I already had it from the files—wife, three children, Moscow—but he was willing to risk further contact.

“Thank you, Pavlov.”

I’m not sure I can explain how that gesture made me feel. It meant something to me, something that took me yet further away from Mormeck Mountain. I had a sudden image of a graying, elderly komodo—monstrous—clothed in a sweater sitting in a rocking chair in a far-distant cottage and penning a letter to his old comrade from the war. Maybe one day coming to visit, catching up their separate lives.

Absurd. Impossible. Or was it?

As I took the piece of paper as gently as I could from Pavlov, my massive claws clicking together, I felt a welling up of affection I had not expected, mixed with an utterly devastating sadness. In this forsaken place, sent here by demons disguised as angels.

Pavlov was the closest thing I had ever had to a friend. And I was leaving him now. For his own safety as for mine.

“In return, there is one thing I would like you to do for me on your…on your way out of town,” Pavlov said.

“Anything, Pavlov,” I said.

I could hear the Scrap inside me vibrating minutely with laughter, and that struck me as sinister…

for hm

For those of you wondering whatever happened to the Situation comic commissioned by Tor.com and based on my novelette of the same name…it’s inching closer to completion. Eric Orchard has finished revisions to some images and speech bubbles, and it’s gone on to the letterer. So we expect it will be ready fairly soon, and should go live on Tor.com by the end of the year or early next year, at the latest.

Here are a few screen captures from the almost-final PDF, without text of course.

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Note: Been reading this serialized long story/novella? Please support a full-time writer. Paypal to vanderworld at hotmail.com—much appreciated! Donations above $21 will entitle you to a free copy of initial anthology or stand-alone book appearance.

Living on a far-distant planet, Doctor Mormeck works for strange beings that might or might not be angels by conducting surveillance across a hundred thousand alt-Earths. When an avatar of Mormeck is sent to a war-torn winter city to investigate a mysterious Presence, the doctor will become embroiled an ever-widening conflict.

Archive is here, Journals of Mormeck.

Thanks to those loyal readers who have been keeping up with my serialized novel The Journals of Doctor Mormeck. I really appreciate your support and donations. Because of the slight lag in posting new entries—rectified starting tomorrow—I am posting below the entire text of the story thus far. I’m hoping this will intrigue new readers enough to join us in following the next installments. (If donations fall below a certain level, I will have to pull the plug on publicly posting the entries.)

I’m not too fussed about posting the entire thing here in terms of future readers for any book version, in part because this is rough draft. I am about 99 percent of the time typing right into a blog entry with little or no touch-up of the prose. I have a fairly good idea of the voice of Mormeck Mountain and the avatar. What comes next in the future drafts is structural, characterization changes, changing the order of things, adding sections, deleting sections, etc. The final published version will be very much different.

For example, it’s quite clear to me—and this is something that a writer can only usually figure out from the process of actual writing of the first draft—that Doctor Mormeck’s reason for starting the journal is because of his infatuation with Marty. Now, in the rough draft, that catalyst isn’t there. Marty comes in much later. However, that’s the kind of change you think about making in later drafts. In addition, I realize there’s a third kind of entry which is simply descriptions of the experiments the angels are conducting, with Mormeck’s help. And that these entries will come at regular intervals, more or less where the text is naturally transitioning into a new “section”. Right now, too, the ghost frogs aren’t exactly hardwired into the story, and the bit about the alien baby head also needs to either have more causal significance or be cut. In terms of Mormeck and Marty, I need at least one more scene of his observations of her, while probably cutting part of one of the “I know I’m going to have to talk to her” scenes. And so on and so forth. This is all good news in that it means the story is very much alive in my head.

Anyway, enjoy this huge-ass post with the text thus far, and I hope you will continue reading….

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