Writing is Good, Actually

So I just published the first three vignettes in the fictional universe that has been living rent-free in my head for the last five or so years.

My polycule a few weeks ago goaded me into writing some of it down, and, uh, suddenly I find I have an entire account at Campfire Write filling up with characters and locations and maps and timelines and aircraft designs. I am asking friends questions about fictional-use callsigns for ham radio and aircraft tail numbers, researching the state of the art in generative design, and generally just finding the ideas pouring out of me.

This is fun! Hot damn.

The universe aims to be a hard science-fiction near-future that develops naturally (if, uh, aggressively quickly) from current technology. I really want to make sure that nothing in-universe is magic.

I am also having a lot of fun making these characters. The core three are already nearly as familiar to me as are my IRL friends. Hell, one of my characters has already taken the story in a different direction than I had anticipated at the beginning; that vignette is incomplete at the moment, but I will likely get it published in a week or so.

I am unapologetically releasing these vignettes in the order I write them; the in-universe chronology is indicated in a heading in each post. Maybe eventually Jamie will help me build a timeline generator for Nikola so there is a place where they are sorted in universe time.

Oh, and as we were joking on Fediverse: anyone not in my immediate section of the polycule deserves $100 to a charity of their choice if they guess what TLMC means before I end up revealing it in-universe. Hit me up on Fedi or elsewhere with guesses.