I haven’t posted anything in a while, and what I was posting was a little off on my wild soap-box ranting side. I’m not getting off my soap-box, but I don’t really have anything to rant about today; no monsters to defame and no tyrants to shoot off their horse… Except to mention one woman (to quote Manual Davis, “can’t call her ‘lady.'”) who didn’t sign the petition I was passing around, insisted that she was a progressive activist anyway and called President Obama a tyrant and a dictator. What a country we live in that you don’t get carried off in a bag at night for saying these things – it’s not that way in some places.

Anyway, I’ve been writing in my spare time. I won’t go into too many details about the story, but I will say that if you were stuck with me in Mark Powell’s fiction workshop at any time in the last year or so, you’ll remember Mr. Smith, the immortal. His disjointed and often non sequitur tales have been woven into a single piece that follows his endless life for several centuries while he gets jerked around.

In fact, the image today was something my wonderful, fantastic Assistant drew for me out of the blue before I got on my plane out of Tampa back to sunny (not so sunny this last week) Muskegon, Michigan. For as much as she insists that she can’t draw and that everything she creates is crud, I would choose to point you at the image I chose for today’s post. This is Smith. It’s an image of him sometime before he realized he was probably going to live forever; a young, puckish rogue who’d sooner just nap than actually do his job. A man, fictional or not, after my own heart. (*chuckle*)

In addition to my Assistant creating the faces of my world, a Certain Scientific Railgun– I mean Sparky– I mean… Let’s try this again. I met a friend of Lind’s at Metrocon who I spoke to at relative length about my book. He agreed to let me have a look at his sketchbook he had at the time and I commissioned him to design the machines and ships of my book. Now at first, the commission was for a shorter, AU tale about the same characters, but in a more Miyazaki-esque steampunk setting. This has since expanded to more of the whole book of The Immortal Mr. Smith. I don’t have anything from him yet, but I’m really excited having only seen a few images in his sketches.

Last, I suppose, I’ll put a little sample of the prose here. I can do that safely, right? I mean, IP is more or less a protected thing these days, eh? Whatever. I’ll put a little up and let me know what you think. The following is about a thousand words from the beginning-middle parts of Runners of Arcadia, one of the short stories from Immortal Mr. Smith. I wanted to put it up mainly to illustrate my writing style, so I’ll put the scene into context. Jason and Lucas are part of some kind of death game on a planet called Arcadia. The ten million victims of the Arcadia Project are trapped in a super-city and were told there are no laws. Go nuts. One year later, these two teenagers are doing their day-to-day business when Lucas finally finds where the ringing he’s been hearing is coming from. Atop the building, Smith and his crew have arrived, partly to turn the Arcadia Project on it’s head, partly out of whim and random chance. This is Smith’s intro into this part of the story:

---

At the top of a thirty-story climb, no small feat at how fast Lucas was moving; they came to a large, somewhat curved structure. It seemed to be large enough to fit several people and rooms inside and fit loosely on the roof of the massively wide building. The windows were coated in a silver, metallic, watery material that rippled with the change in sunlight. It reminded Jason a little of the older science fantasy stories back home – those that existed before spaceflight was a common enough practice. An ‘ufo,’ he thought. But this thing was just sitting there, a far cry from flying anywhere

Lucas approached the craft, amazed, it would seem, that it was in front of him at all. “Jason,” he said, staring at the strange thing in front of them. “The bells stopped.”

Which was when a door slid open from the craft. A ramp slid down and an airlock hissed out the remainder of the pressure difference. Jason couldn’t see through the light coming from the ship, but Lucas wanted to get closer. They closed in, Lucas grabbing Jason’s hand to pull him along. It might be sweet if Jason wasn’t scared out of his wits.

The two stopped at the bottom of the ramp as four people descended toward them.

“It’s good that someone finally heard my call,” one said in a chiding retort to an unheard comment. He seemed young, but his voice was old.

“It is not the fault of lesser species that the Methuselah’s methods are too advanced. The Methuselah is lucky that this worked at all,” another voice ground out. It was harsh, but tolerable.

“I have to agree,” a younger female said. Jason stared as well as he could into the light – finding it hard to take his eyes off of her. He couldn’t tell exactly what she looked like, but appeared young. “That even one person on this entire planet had the psyonic aptitude to hear the cloister is astounding.”

“You forget,” the last voice said. This was a modest, mature voice and the easiest of the males on the teenager’s ears. “Smith has access to unknown foreknowledge.” He turned to the first man to speak, Smith. “You’ll pay for this, my friend. You’ll have to inform yourself of all of this at a later time and I don’t want to help you.”

“Forgive me if I step on the rules a bit,” Smith said. “I didn’t write them and I don’t like following them.” He seemed to see the boys for the first time and greeted them. “Hello there!”

Lucas leapt forward to shake Smith’s hand while Jason steadied himself against attack. Twice today is twice too many.

“Your friend doesn’t like me,” Smith said to Lucas.

“He’s got no reason not to,” Lucas said, directing the sentiment at Jason.

“For all we know.” Then, Smith said to Jason, “Boy, have I wronged you before? Be honest. Time travel confuses me as much as, well… this planet, I guess.”

Jason slowly took to a social stance. He tucked the metal pipe away and said, “Not that I know. You’ve done nothing to harm us. Who are you and what do you want?” Jason eyed the gun Lucas hid away, considering two possible situations. The first, Lucas uses it if this goes south. The second, he has to steal it if Lucas were to freeze up.

Smith let Lucas’ hand go.

“That’s an interesting question, boy. Let me just say that our interests intersect.” Smith finished with a spin to face his crew. “Welcome aboard.”

“Don’t give him that, Smith,” the mature man said.

The young woman said, “For once, can you take the mission seriously?”

“Methuselah is incapable of taking action with solemnity. This is both Methuselah’s strength and most pressing danger,” the man with the sandpaper vocals said.

Smith sighed out a loud sigh. “Fine.” He turned back to the teenagers. “Guys, I’m called Smith. Name never really mattered, call me what you want. The lovely lady is Chi Anderson. Nice girl. Knew her… was he your dad or your dad’s mom’s dad?”

“Hey,” Chi responded, indignant.

Smith ignored her complaint about his phrasing. “Girl needs manners. The kid next to her is Alexis Wells, Super-Awesome-Time-Boy.”

“What was that,” Alexis demanded.

Smith again ignored the peanut gallery. “The scary fellow is Jones. He’s harmless, I swear.”

Jones said, “Mostly harmless,” dismissing Smith’s asserted fact, moving into a half bow.

     “This is my ship, Veillantif. And you, boys, are looking at the single most advanced piece of technology you’ve ever seen. Feel like hitching a lift home?”

It was like the veil was lifted.

“Home,” Jason questioned, aghast at the idea after so long.

“That’s what I said, kid,” Smith said.

Jason though for a moment. His glance at Lucas’ weapons told Smith that the trust to believe him wasn’t there. As it stood, he lured in Jason’s best friend and showed them nothing less than a miracle. Jason wasn’t buying it.

Before Jason could question Smith further, an explosion shook the building, collapsing parts of the facade and shattering windows up all thirty flights.

“Ruka!”

A high voice came up the building, piercing ears. Lucas, Chi and Smith raced to the side of the roof, taking a careful glance over. Smoke was rising from the ground and Smith thought he saw the beginnings of a fire in the shadowy mist.

The building shook again with a male shrill of “Aki!”

Chi was first to lose her footing when the floor collapsed. Lucas reached for her, but couldn’t pull her back up; instead was pulled over. Smith leapt for them, pulling both in tight only part way through his trajectory over the side. Jones, alert at once, took off in a run after the three. His arms turned to massive wings as he moved.

“Methuselah!”

He dove into the collapsing building, taking up a transformation and an avian-style assisted dive in an attempt to fall faster than those ahead of him. All of this took only seconds.