Two Cakes
I’m sorry, but I have nothing substantive for you this week. I have several things half-finished, but that’s obviously not good enough.
There was going to be a Shabcast this week, but the recording fell through. My fault. I’ve been crazy busy in my offline life lately. Also, I’ve been melting.
Anyway, in order to fulfill my contractural obligation and actually provide some content for Phil and yourselves, I will fob you all off with the first chapter of a fiction project I started last year, tentatively called The Abandoned Line. Let me know what you think… unless you hate it, in which case please be tactfully silent. I honestly wouldn’t be doing this to you if I had anything else ready.
(By the way, I know the use of the word ‘very’ in the first sentence is less then ideal, but don’t know how else to make the rhythm work. Suggestions for how to get rid of it would be appreciated.)
*
When Iza Park found out that her sister Ria was real, they were both very surprised about it.
“Is that me?” asked Ria.
Iza jumped so hard she dropped the book and the photo.
“Where did you come from?” she hissed, twisting around.
“Don’t ask me,” said Ria, who was sitting cross-legged on the kitchen table, “I don’t get any say in it. You’re the one who sends me away when you don’t need me and brings me back when you want something.”
They stared at each other for a moment. Iza waited.
Come on then, she thought, do the next bit. The bit designed to make me feel guilty. The bit you say like you’re talking to yourself, but loud enough so I can hear it.
“Not that you’ve brought me back much lately,” added Ria in an audible mumble.
“I was getting a bit too old to have an imaginary friend,” said Iza.
“I’m your sister, not your friend,” said Ria, “and if I’m imaginary,” she continued, pointing at the photo on the floor, “how come I’m in there?”
Iza bent down and picked up both the photo and the book in which she’d found it. The book had arrived that morning in the post.
Iza recognised herself in the picture, looking about three or four years old. It was the first photo of herself at that age – or any age younger than five – that she had ever seen. But it was definitely her. Little Iza was looking at the camera and smiling. The girl sat next to her was doing neither. She seemed happy enough to be sat next to Iza, but less than thrilled with anything else that was going on. She looked a little older. The girls’ faces had many things in common – same eyes, same nose – but in Iza’s case those things were set into happy surroundings, whereas in Ria’s the surroundings were sad. Both faces were lit from below, golden with candlelight.
“Yes,” said Iza to Ria, who was now standing just behind her, peering at the photo over her shoulder, “it’s you.”…
We now begin what I consider to be the second act of LOST’s first season. The basic tenor of the show has now been laid out – our principal characters have been introduced in some detail, as has the mysteriousness of the Island, and the general tenor of the show’s approach to episodic serialization has been established. Overall, it’s been a story of how these survivors of a plane crash have adapted to living on an island in the South Pacific, touching on issues of social organization through intense characterization. Now the show begins to shift focus, adding new dimensions: not only will some of the mysteries introduced early on be revealed, but it starts exploring the implication of the fact that our survivors are not alone.
This week in the world of Oi! Spaceman Shana and I actually did a Classic Doctor Who story without a guest. Since she’s been itching to get some more Liz Shaw love in her life, I showed her
Well, history continues to happen and to be shit. So does editing and writing, though that’s less shit – the next Last War in Albion chapter is actually almost done with the main text. And I just got the last bit of copyediting back from Jane, so I can finish typesetting Volume 1.
Hello, I’m Ian Chinashop, and I own and run 
When I was writing my first volume of Vaka Rangi, I was faced with a dilemma on how to frame the book. I have little to no personal or nostalgic connection to the original Star Trek or its animated sequel so my episode-to-episode reactions were by definition going to be mostly as I saw it. But I still wanted to come up with something unique to say about this most important period of Star Trek history, so I initially decided to structure the book around telling as “real” a story about the franchise’s formative years as I could, with a careful eye towards historical mythbusting in general, in particular how it pertained to the shows creator, the ever-mythologized Gene Roddenberry. I soon realised, however, that this was a task far too massive for me to undertake given the scope of the project I had cast, and quickly found myself intimidated and overwhelmed by the sheer scale of conflicting stories and seemingly deliberate disinformation surrounding Roddenberry and Star Trek. While I still hoped to convey a general idea for what Star Trek actually was and was envisioned as being (and I do feel, and hope, I managed some degree of success), the behind-the-scenes stuff became far too complicated a topic for me to tackle with any aspirations of genuine comprehension.