The Slaver's Tale: Development Notes

It's always a treat when Luke Bellmason blogs about how he creates his stories. Here he is:

Having just completed a story about a miner, the next Tale in the series follows on with the miner’s sort of evil counterpart; the Slaver. For a long time I wasn’t sure what the “evil miner” would be. As I explained in the intro to the Canterbury Tales Vol. 1, I originally came up with six main character types and a ‘good’ and ‘evil’ version of each one. For example the good Trader was the Merchant, and the bad one was the Smuggler. There’s a Bounty Hunter (good) and an Assassin (bad).

Slaves were a commodity in the original Elite and the players manual describes a little about how some spacers who ejected from their doomed vessels could sometimes be blown up in their pods, or collected with a fuel scoop, when they would become slaves!

In my story, the lead character uses slaves to mine out huge asteroids because minerals just aren’t worth very much and slaves are free labour. If she had to pay everyone for their work, there wouldn’t be any profit in mining! Of course, this is a very current topic with half the world working in horrendous conditions to mine precious minerals and do menial assembly tasks so the other half can have their smart phones and cheap clothes. Of course many of these consumers are themselves slaves, wage slaves or trying to earning thier way out of accumulated debt each day. Then there’s the troubled history of my own country with the slave trade and the extensive benefits the British Empire and its contemporaries gained through effectively having thousands of unpaid workers. In fact it seems like any global superpower has got where it has through the exploitation of people.

I’m not sure how much my story is going to be able to address these issues, probably not much since it’s only a short story and I intend to focus more on the plight of the characters and their actions rather than moralising about history, but it’s in my mind nonetheless.

I’m also thinking about the robots and how the word actually comes from the Czech word for forced labour, by way of K. Capek’s story ‘Rossum’s Universal Robots’. Ironically, the Slaver doesn’t use the robots to do the actual mining because it turns out they’re not very good at it, at least not as good as slaves. This is largely because robots can’t be ‘motivated’ to work harder like sentient beings can. When I say ‘motivated’ I of course mean the stick rather than the carrot, but thereby hangs the central point of the Slaver’s Tale and I don’t want to give you too many spoilers before the story itself comes out.

I know roughly what kind of ending I want, but have been stuck on the details. I realised some way into the planning stage of the story that to really work out the ending I needed to know precisely how the mining operation worked. I’ve also been watching a lot of Mission: Impossible and playing GTA:V which relies heavily on really well thought out and planned heists, so my brain is sort of in a certain place with this Tale.

All this has led me to the biggest bit of development I’ve had to do for any of the Tales so far, and that is to work out exactly how the Slaver’s operation functions. I used to love this kind of thing when I ran Role Playing Games. I would spend weeks constucting huge space stations or ships (kind of a similar activity to drawing up maps for Fantasy games) on the basis that you never really knew where the players were going to go.

So without knowing how my story is going to end, I’m building everything without knowing which bits are going to make it into the story. Probably most of this stuff will never make it into the story, but it’s fun working on the background anyway. It also reminds me of a video game setting as well, which is appropriate given the general theme of the Canterbury Tales.

It’s interesting to plan stuff like this though because you never know what’s going to come out of it. I could discover a gap in a wall where one of the characters keeps a set of cutlery, because it reminds her of home, and this could become a crucial plot-point, there’s just no telling! I could even turn the whole thing into a text adventure level or something.

I can’t guarantee that the following doesn’t contain spoilers because I haven’t written the story yet, but I will forgive you if you find it all too boring to read. Anyway, if you do like knowing things like exactly how many spare rolls of toilet paper are keep in the lavatories on level 109, then this is the blog entry for you!

(note. names for alien races, planets and characters I haven’t come up with yet are usually marked with four letters ‘yyyy’, etc. If you want why not suggest your own names.)

__THE MINING OPERATION__

+OVERVIEW

The operation is a mineral mining facility spread over a large area within an asteroid field. It is one of several dozen similar facilities run by the Dosians.

Since raw mineral ore is relatively bulky to transport, it is not profitable to ship it back to the homeworld. Therefore the ore is processed on-site. Multiple minerals are processed and even a few precious gems are found among the ore.

Even in its processed state the minerals themselves are very low profit, so large quantities are required to make the operation viable. Unpaid, slave labour is used to mine the ore from the asteroids and in the processing plant. Robots are also utilised in the mines, but are not considered efficient enough to be used as miners. The robots are instead used mainly to control the slaves remotely (security) and to perform various other specialised and routine maintenance tasks.

The facility comprises a Main Hub where the central administration and accomodation is housed, along with the processing plant and loading dock, a Storage Warehouse, where containers of processed minerals are stored for collection by bulk freighters and multiple Asteroid Mines where ore is collected.
+ MAIN HUB

This large asteroid lies at the centre of the facility. It was originally mined out as part of the facilities construction and the mined ore was used to construct much of the infrastructure.

The topmost part of the Hub comprises of two separate exterior structures; the ‘Palace’ and the Shuttle Dock.

++ The Palace is the living accommodation of the Facility Director (FD) and houses all of her living quarters, food stores, life support, power plant, communications and other ancilleries. In the event of an emergency it can be jettisoned and survive for up to three months in space.

The Palace is connected to the Shuttle Dock by two subsurface tunnels, sealed at each end and in two mid-points. All supplies are moved through here each month when the re-supply shuttle arrives with the Bulk Freighter.

++ The Shuttle Bay provides storage and maintenance for three personal shuttlecraft. These are medium sized, short range interplanetary shuttles which are generally used by the FD and her staff to travel around the facility.

++ The Security Station is manned by robots and monitors all of the facility, thousands of cameras trained on all the slaves wherever they are. Should trouble arise in any location, Security sends in guards to deal with it using whatever methods seem appropriate. Though given the low value of an individual slave there is rarely much regard given to their safety. Any slave which shows even the slightest sign of stepping out of line is normally met with lethal force and riots are dealt with similarly.

++ Robot Maintenance & Control (RMC) is where all robots are repaired, maintained and programmed. All robots working out in the asteroid field and in the processor are autonomous. Their programming is set and updated at regular intervals during their routine maintenance cycle. The robots themselves are much more expensive than the slaves, but they last longer in the harsh environments of the mines and processing plant. Damaged or malfunctioning robots can be brought here from the mines and replacements sent out as necessary.

The basic unit is the Rossum-4260K, which is a multi-purpose unit ideally suited to heavy industrial environments. This unit can be then fitted with a variety of modifications to serve as guards, miners, loaders, maintenance, engineers or almost any other task. Their programming is basic and usually specialised to a particular task. Their human interaction protocols are limited unless fitted with specialist upgrades.

Robot Types;

FL-49: These are sophisticated command units with high-level AI used in the Security Station and in the Hub Admin section. They are capable of near-human level speech and can interpret instructions given to them into programming commands which are then downloaded to the lower level robots.

(All RM-4260 units are interchangeable and can be reassigned and reprogrammed at the RMC.)

RM-4260K-D: Guards
Used for processing slaves and keeping order in the mines. Fitted with stunner-prods, gas tanks and guns should things get out of hand. Interpersonal interaction units are fitted to allow limited communication with the slaves. These units also have security monitoring systems which relay back to the main Security Station on the Hub.
RM-4260K-S: Miners
Though they don’t do any real mining as such, they are configured to set up the tunnels, lay down the extraction equipment and generally assist with operations.
RM-4260-E: Engineer
These are configured for construction and more specialist mining procedures, such as the installation of lift shafts, habitable modules and other such structures. They do not work on other robots, but can recover them to be sent to the RMC on the Hub.
RM-4260-R: Loaders
Used in the various loading and unloading docks around the facility these robots operate a wide range of bulk lifters, haulers and plant machinery. Anywhere there’s ore, product or other supplies to be moved, loaders are used.
RM-4260-T: Maintenance
These are the robots which repair and maintain the other robots. Most work in the RMC on the Hub, but each asteroid has its own maintenance unit which can take care of minor faults and repairs.

[The slaves have nick-named the different types of robot based on their designation letter; R=Robbie, E=Eddie, S=Sammy, D=Davy, T=Tommy. So instead of calling them guards, a slave might say "Look out, Davy's coming." Nobody knows who the slave who came up with this was, but it seems universal that sentient beings in harsh environments will do anything they can to lighten up their dreary lives or to 'humanise' machinery.]

++ The Power Plant consists of four starship class power cores. The Processor consumes 98% of the total power output of the plant, but at any one time only two of the cores is required to be operating at full power. Normally though the load is spread over three cores working at 33% capacity each. This allows for peak requirements to be met more easily and reduces overall wear and tear on the reactors.
There is a secondary backup system in place should the main cores fail for any reason, but this system would not be able to power the Processor.

++ The Processor takes up almost the whole of the inside of the asteroid. Some of the upper sections have admin offices, control rooms and ancillery accommodations, but the operation of the processor is largely automated so only rarely does anyone need to come down here. There is a lift from the Palace into the admin section of the processor, and from there most of the interior can be accessed if necessary, but this is rarely required.

The main processor takes ore from the sleds, analyses it and subjects it to various chemical and mechanical processes. Slave labour is used throughout many of these procedures, but due to the nature of the environment slaves don’t last more than a few weeks on the job. For this reason, being assigned to the processing plant is considered a death sentence and is used as punishment for low productivity. After one week slaves will be sent back to their asteroid having learned their lesson, but most don’t recover from the experience and soon find themselves back as their failing health leads their productivity to drop even further.

++ The Loading Dock is where the containers are loaded with processed minerals ready for transport back to the homeworld. The containers are lifted out by automated tugs which take them to the storage facility.
+ THE STORAGE FACILITY

Containers of processed minerals are brought here from the Hub for storage. Once a month a bulk freighter from the Homeworld collects the full containers and leaves empty ones. The warehouse itself is carved out of a spent asteroid, the second one to be mined after the main hub asteroid. Everything here is automated, from the tugs to the unloading and storage to the loading of the freighters. There is no life support or habitable areas so any maintenance must be carried out by robots.

+ THE MINES

Each asteroid has its own designation based on its position/bearing relative to the Hub and its distance. In this way an infinate number of designations may be generated as new asteroids are added to the operation. At a certain point the distance of mines from the Hub becomes economically unviable, at which point the operation is shut down and the vital components (processor, power-plant, vehicles, robots) are removed to a new site.

A mine consists of several common features, with precise configuration being dependent on mineral content and asteroid size/shape.

++ The Docking Point is a universal access port fixed to the outside of the asteroid. It is similar to the the Shuttle Bay on the Hub, but is on three levels. All personnel are shipped through here including Slaves and Robots. Other equipment can be shipped through here also, but large machinery is moved through the Loading Bay.

++ The Airlock is a system of interconnecting passageways and chambers connecting the Docking Point to the interior of the mine, which is kept at standard pressure. Robots may use the Docking Point as an open area, but other personnel need to lock their vessels to the airlock doors inside the bay.

++ The Security Area is immediately behind the Airlock and is designed to handle Slaves in and out of the mine onto and off the Slave Transports. The section is run by Type-D robots. As slaves pass through the section they are routinely searched and scanned for any prohibited materials. They are also logged in and out with thier ‘tags’ and any slave with a malfunctioning or missing tag is sent for re-tagging.

++ The Robot Control Area is a section immediately behind the Security Area and inaccessible to any slave. Here all routine maintenance is carried out and robots are cleaned and serviced. Anything more major requires the robot to be shipped back to the Hub.

++ The Loading Bay is where the raw ore is loaded onto Ore Sleds to be shipped to the Hub. The ore is fed up through the mines along a complex series of grav-feeds and belts. When a slave loads a cart it’s mass is recorded and logged to that slave’s tag. That ore is then fed through the system to the Loading Bay.

++ Living Accomodations for the Slaves are basic in the extreme. In one small area there is a food unit which dispenses food pellets and water at pre-programmed intervals and sleeping racks. There’s little room to move around and three or four slaves might have to share one sleeping rack. There’s no communal area for socializing, but this rarely becomes a problem since outside of the four hour sleep cycle slaves are expected to be hard at work trying desperately not to be at the bottom of the week’s productivity list.
+ VEHICLES & VESSELS

All vehicles around the facility are automated and controlled by a central computer on the Hub. This avoids traffic conflicts and manages the flow of materials, slaves and robots throughout the whole operation. Shuttles may also be controlled by this system or flown directly by a pilot.

++ Ore Sled – These are large vessels designed to carry ore from the mines to the Hub. They are basically a huge cargo hold with an engine and guidance system attached. At the hub end they dump out the loose ore into the processor.

++ Container Barge -
slave transport
personal shuttle

++ Bulk Carrier – This is the ship which turns up each month to collect the loaded containers and ship them back to the homeworld. It is manned.
[aurubesh]

Diosian Alphabet

Auru
Bith
Chee
Migil
Delu
Hoh
Va
Ziu
Shih
alef – aleph
bet – beth
gimel
daleth – dalet
heh
vav
zain – zayin
cheth – het
teth – tet
yod
kaph – kaf
lamed
mem
nun
samekh
ayin
peh – pe
tzaddi – tsadi
qoph – qof
resh
shin
tau – tav

Book Tour

Today's post is by Luke Bellmason, and I personally think he's got a splendid idea.

Last week my good friends at The Sucker’s Guild held a meeting and we discussed promotion ideas; which web-sites to sign-up to, what kind of thing blog readers like to read, etc.

The web is a great promotional tool, but after the meeting I started thinking about how I could get out there in the “Real World” to promote my books, to meet real people. My plan has always been to build a ‘following’ of folks who like my books and who will tell others about them. It’s a long slow process, though I am promoting myself on all kinds of web-sites – Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads,Readwave – but I know that one of the most important factors in promotion is ‘word of mouth’.

In one sense, it’s easier to sell your own work. If you’re writing the kind of stuff you enjoy as a reader, like I am (corporate sell-outs stop reading now!) then you should have a fairly strong belief in your product. You know it’s awesome right? So all you have to do is persuade everyone else it’s awesome.

In marketing they have a phrase ‘unique selling point’. This is the one distinguishing feature that your product has which no other product has. It sets your product apart from the rest and makes it stand out. In my case I think the USP for The Canterbury Tales is the ‘tales’ themselves. They are based on the idea of storytelling, of a story teller sitting in front of group of people and speaking. Story telling has fascinated me for a long time because it’s such a basic thing; everybody tells stories.

Go out into a bunch of people in a pub, your local store or cafe and you’ll hear people telling stories. Mostly (but not always)the stories they tell are true, or partly true with some embellishments, exaggerations and omissions. We all learn this skill, some people get very good at it. They learn what part of the ‘story’ works by observing the reactions they get from their audience. They will re-tell that story many times, if it’s a good one, and will change they way it’s told ever so slightly based on these reactions.

Story telling predates even the written word, stories were around long before we had books, but when we did start writing these oral stories into books we had the problem of permanence. Words in a book cannot be changed, sections cannot be left out if the reader shows signs of boredom – sections cannot be added or changed if the reader enjoys what they’re reading. Of course, this may become possible one day with the technology offered to us by eBooks and smart devices.

Each tale in my book is told in first person and they could be read out, I would even say they ‘should’ be read out. All of the story telling events I’ve looked for in my area, however, are related to folk-tales, historical fiction and traditional stories. There doesn’t seem to be sci-fi action/adventure story telling scene; that kind of thing seems to be the preserve of podcasts and youtube. (Ok, so that’s another idea in itself.)

So I am toying with the idea of doing readings from the Canterbury Tales, perhaps in libraries or coffee shops or to local sci-fi groups. The obvious thing to do would be to read the finished ones, but should I consider something even more radical? Should I read the ones I haven’t finished yet, should I even have them written down? Might it be an interesting experiment to come up with a basic outline then attempt to tell the story in character from a synopsis?

Ok, now consider that I am on a sort of pilgrimage myself while I am doing this. This summer I rode from my home by bike out to the Malverns. I took a tent, a sleeping bag and a couple of sets of clothes and I cycled for about a week through tiny villages along back roads. It was such an amazing thing to do and I got fit into the bargain. I’ve done some back of the envelope calculations and worked out that the distance I rode to Malvern and back would have been about the same as from here to Canterbury in the south-east of England.

So, I thought, what about a cycling book tour next summer? By then, I am hoping to have another four stories ready for volume 2 and I would maybe have another couple ready as ‘ideas’ roughly sketched out. I could stay in hostels, which are a lot better for meeting people than hotels or even camp-sites.

I’m sure it would give me a lot of things to write about too. One of the things about this year’s holiday was I didn’t take anything electronic; no iPad, no phone, no laptop. This time I could take some devices with me and live-blog the trip as I go. I actually think the iPad would weigh less than the book and notebook I took with me this year. I think I should also use my time on the road to read Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales as well.

On the way round I might be able to find places to let me do readings. I am certain I will get to hear other people’s stories too, though not necessarily sci-fi ones, and just maybe I will meet people who will become fans and will tell all their friends about the crazy writer guy who cycled to Canterbury.

Science Fiction Story Collection

My science fiction story collection now has a title...finally! Here's the cover, short a few tweaks. Planning to launch on Black Friday this year.

Worldbuilding: Dagooldabad of the Gogue

Here's a page I wrote to help me understand the setting for my science fiction story "The Mammal Cage":

The desert stretches for a thousand miles in every direction. Most of it is dry sand in shades of grey and black and green, interrupted only by outcroppings of the rock from which the winds have, over the millennia, created the sand. Some of the rocks are just the right size to fit in the hand, as if they had been made for throwing; some are big enough to be called mountains, and most are somewhere in between. Besides the rocks, two features dot the otherwise monotonous landscape of shifting sand: the oases that foster life and the volcanoes that take it away.

The oases aren't, for the most part, bountiful springs of water that make the land green with the lushness of luxuriant vegetation. They are modest underground aquifers, rather close to the surface, making possible the growth of cacti and scrub grasses that in turn support a modest number of animals.

The volcanoes, also, aren't like the great cinder cones found in other places. They are neither tall nor steep nor round, and never once, in all of recorded history, has even one erupted in that exploding-mountain way that volcanoes are known for.

And they never will, either, say the geologists, because they can't. Only magma rich in silica can build up pressure for huge explosions, because silica makes the magma thick and gloppy, trapping the volcanic gases and holding in the pressure, saving it up for sometimes hundreds of years until one day it reaches its limit, puts on a breathtaking show and causes horrible devastation. The magma under the Gogue desert, though, is made mostly of pyroxenite and olivine, very low in silica and therefore very liquid when melted. Gases escape easily through cracks in the overlying bedrock, and occasionally lava gushes out, too, and forms glowing red rivers which eventually cool into solid black and green rock.

Long ago, the experts say, the Gogue desert was the Gogue rainforest.

Dagooldabad is a place where an oasis and a volcano are uneasy neighbors, the volcano slowly stealing land from the oasis and turning its precious water into steam. 

The village is very old, a hundred centuries old, some archeologists say, while others disagree and said it is two hundred or even five hundred centuries old. What they all do seem to agree on is that, whatever era it was when it was first settled, it lay in a lush tropical environment, in a fertile valley, perhaps even on the banks of some ancient river. The vast hot desert that dictates so much of the villagers' lives in this millennium did not exist yet in that one, and the lake of boiling rock that bubbled and sputtered beyond the cliffs at the edge of the village in modern times still lay under miles of bedrock, although the bedrock may have already been beginning to crack.

According to one theory, there had already been small fissures in the bedrock, and the hot volcanic gases had escaped upward through these fissures, and the frequent jungle rains had trickled downward through these same fissures, and when they'd met they'd created steam, and it was this steam that had first attracted some of the area's semi-nomadic primitives to settle here.

In time, lava had followed the steam through the fissures and flowed down the valley, perhaps meeting the river and turning its water suddenly to vapor in a loud, popping, hissing collision. Eventually, the thin crust of rock on the surface was worn away too much to bear its own weight, and it collapsed and melted and became part of the lake of lava it had sheltered. Now, east and north of the village are great dark cliffs ,and beyond those cliffs lay a plain of rock, rippled and cracked, mostly black and sometimes red, sometimes dark and sometimes erupting with fountains of scarlet that lit up the night.

The village has an odd name, because of its age. Almost without exception, villages, towns and cities have names that sound like the names of people. From the faraway bustling metropolis of Zoke to the little city of Hiyat where most of the villagers work and shop and find their connection with the world, municipalities are called by simple one-syllable names, a vowel or two or at the most three, closed on both ends by consonants. But the village, named in ancient times by speakers of a long-forgotten language, is called Dagooldabad.

There have been movements, over the centuries, to bring Dagooldabad into the modern era by truncating its name. Dag was proposed once, and Bad about a decade later. The last Zirode from Hiyat, the one before the present one, had tried to force the name Gool on the village over the objections of its citizens. But he had lost and they had won, and the village had remained Dagooldabad.

Modern Dagooldabad had about two hundred residents, who by reason of being wedged between the unforgiving desert and the punishing volcano, tend to watch out for one another and be, perhaps, more united, more of a real village in the old sense, than most.

Orphans of the Salt

This is a bit of an experiment. I found a story I want to share with you, but instead of getting permission to copy and paste it as usual, I got permission to embed it. I really have no idea how it will appear, so here goes:

Read on ReadWave.com

Guest Post: Cover Art

This is the final post in the special series of guest posts by Luke Bellmason to celebrate the recent launch of his new science-fiction book, The Canterbury Tales, Volume I. These posts are repeated from Luke's own blog. I wanted to share them with you because they give a nice little glimpse into what it's like for him as a writer. They were written before the book's launch. Here's Luke:

They say you shouldn’t do your own cover art for your book. It’s probably good advice, but I’ve always wanted to do book covers. About six years ago I did a full two year course at my local college in Graphic Design. Not because I wanted or expected to get a career as a graphic designer (though I admit it would have been nice), but simply because I wanted to learn more about how to do logos, cover art and such professionally. I got a HND in Visual Communications out of it, which is like a starter pre-university qualification.

This means I am actually even more qualified to do my book cover than I am to write my book; writing is something for which I have no professional training at all! It also means that I am in a fairly unique position of being able to truly reflect my book and my writing style in my cover art.

This is still the concept cover, but it’s beginning to grow on me. I wanted a cover which was like my writing style; bold, simple, straight-forward and clear. This design hopefully gives some indication of the four characters who’s stories feature in the volume. One of the major problems with having a title like ‘The Canterbury Tales’ is that I didn’t want to mislead people into thinking this was the original book, but really I’m going to have to hope that people read the blurb on the back before buying it so they know it’s not. The other factor I needed to consider was that the other two volumes need to have the same style of artwork, but look different, so I’ll be using different background colours for each one, and each character is going to have their own colour as well. I also wanted something which would stand out on the Amazon Kindle store, where the vast majority of sci-fi titles have starfields, ships, planets and such.

Of course, if I could actually draw I might have gone with all that stuff, but I can’t draw! So I use Adobe Illustrator, which is a piece of software so fiendishly difficult to use that few people get past the first two hours of trying to make it do anything even remotely useful. But I’m a video game player, I’m used to software which is difficult to control, which actively tries to make life difficult for you and which reveals its secrets to you only after you’ve shown it that you’re the boss! Learning to use Illustrator seemed a lot like that.

So, for those who are interested, The Canterbury Tales Vol. 1 nears completion. I have spent the past months editing, proof-reading and finishing off the text. Then came the task of taking the finished files and formatting everything into a word document to get it Kindle compatible. After that, I took almost three days to write the Preface and finally, I got to do the cover art – probably my favourite part of the whole process.

I posted this concept cover on my Twitter feed last night and this morning I woke to find it had been favourited by Ray Dillon! Don’t know who Ray Dillon is? Well he’s a writer and artist who does the artwork for HBO’s Game of Thrones and who has done a massive amount of work on comics, cover art and trading cards. After you’ve finished admiring my lovely cover, head on over to Ray’s page and marvel at his gorgeous images. Needless to say, I am super psyched about my cover getting favourited by such a luminary and wow, what a huge compliment. Thanks Ray!

My book’s going to hit the Kindle store in the next week or so, assuming I can successfully wrangle with MS Word and the upload process. I’ll be sure to post here when it’s finally up, check back soon for more news!

Guest Post: Artwork

Here's another guest post by Luke Bellmason, as part of our series honoring the recent launch of his novel, The Canterbury Tales, Volume I:

As I get closer to the publication of the Canterbury Tales Volume 1 (it’s coming, it’s coming!) I start to bring together all the ideas I’ve been having over the last months about what the cover should look like. I had a few ideas about what I didn’t want the cover to look like; NASA star fields look fantastic, but a lot of sci-fi books all tend to go with that. I wouldn’t mind some starships flying around on the cover, but I can’t draw that well and again, they’re all much of a muchness.

So I went back to another game I had thought up about a year ago. As regular readers may know, The Canterbury Tales is based on a board game I was trying to develop, but it turned into a book instead. It’s quite fitting therefore that the cover and internal artwork for the book comes from another game I was tinkering with – namely a Sabacc card game.

The Sabacc game is from the Star Wars universe and there’s a few sets of rules out on the web which describe the cards and how they work. The major problem with recreating this game in the real world is that the cards in Sabacc are electronic and can change without warning. The cards actually shuffle themselves in your hand and the only way to stop them doing this is to put them in an interference field on the table, which of course reveals them to your opponents.

I found some images of what the cards might look like in one of the Star Wars comics and decided to develop the visual theme into a whole deck. I managed to make a set and print it out, but playing the game was a lot more complicated than most players could handle, so it got added to the growing pile of abandoned projects.

Until a couple of days ago. As I thought more about the artwork for the book I realised the visual style I’d used for the Sabacc game could easily be adapted for the individual characters. My thinking is that the Merchant, Assassin, etc. are cards in a deck that spacers might carry around with them, much like we have decks of cards knocking about all over the house. These cards replace the King, Queen, Jack of a standard deck – and handily there’s 12 such cards in a deck and 12 characters in The Canterbury Tales.

So here’s the first batch. The Assassin, the Knight, the Merchant and the Smuggler. The colours correspond to the theme I’ve got for each character, although in the print edition I’m going to have to go with black since I can’t afford full colour!

So, can you guess which is the Merchant, the Assassin, the Knight and the Smuggler? These are still early versions, but I’m thinking  about the general visual style and how I can use it in promotional material and to create the ‘branding’ for the book. A good, strong visual image is always useful to make a book stand out from the crowd, but I think the images are a bit too ‘bold’ at the moment and need toning down a bit, maybe with some effects or by printing onto something then photographed. I could even go into printing these out as wall art or screen prints, but I’m getting ahead of myself – I need to finish the damn book before I start getting wrapped up in promotion!

Guest Post: Launch Day!

My fellow Suckers Guild member Luke Bellmason has just launched his new novel, and I'm very excited.

The book is called The Canterbury Tales,Volume I, and here's what he has to say about it on his blog (and yes, I do have permission to repeat it here):

The Canterbury Tales – Volume 1 is now officially available for download in the Amazon Kindle store. The ebook is available on the US and UK stores as well as all the other global stores.
Kindle Prime members can borrow the book for free and there’s no DRM so you can even lend it to your friends (or foes).
The Canterbury Tales tells the stories of twelve space travellers on their way to Vale aboard a passenger liner, the GSS Canterbury. Volume 1 contains four short stories; the Smuggler’s Tale, the Merchant’s Tale, the Assassin’s Tale and the extended two-part Knight’s Tale. Volumes 2 and 3 will follow in 2014 and 2015 and introduce the Pirate, the Bounty Hunter, the Commander, the Spy, the Scout, the Slaver and more!
The style is heavily influenced by 80s video games and by Chaucer’s own idea of having a story telling competition among a group of pilgrims. If you like action/adventure space fiction, tightly woven plots and bold characters, with a dash of humour thrown in you’ll probably like The Canterbury Tales. One of the most original and inventive new works to come out of the publishing houses of Ursa Minor in recent years.

The Canterbury Tales, Volume I is not a Suckers Guild book, as Luke joined the Guild very shortly before the book launch. But we're all very excited for him. I've been privileged to see a little bit of the book, and I can't wait to read the rest of it.

Watch here for more about The Canterbury Tales.

Guest Post: The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales

I'm delighted to have Luke Bellmason back, this time with his science fiction short story, "The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales":

WHEN that Aprilis, with his showers swoot, 
The drought of March hath pierced to the root,
And bathed every vein in such licour, 
Of which virtue engender'd is the flower;

And smalle fowles make melody,
That sleepen all the night with open eye,
So pricketh them nature in their corages;
Then longe folk to go on pilgrimages,

And specially, from every shire's end of Engleland,
to Canterbury they wend.

-Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, Late 14th Century, Earth
CHAPTER ONE

THE PROLOGUE TO THE CANTERBURY TALES

Many are the suns of the nine galaxies and greater still the number of worlds which circle them; so that a being may live a thousand years, travel every day of her life and yet touch naught but a small fraction of this great domain. And yet, there is one solar-system among this multitude which can claim its greater share of visitors, for it lies like the centre of a great wheel, with all others spinning round it.

In one constant steady stream do these travellers come, spacer-pilots all; be they helmsman of the smallest tug or commander of the mightiest starcruiser. Each decade at a time all must take the same Pilgrimage. On liners such as this one do they meet and journey to the system called Vale. Where the all pervading laws of the Federal Galactic Spaceflight Licensing Authority decree each pilot's licence must be issued, then at ten-year intervals be checked, updated and, if found to be in order, renewed. For, to ignore the authority of the FGSLA is to go the way of the pirate and the fugitive and to spend ones life always one parsec ahead of the lawman, or lawwoman, or lawbeing.

And so it was that I found myself aboard such a vessel, the passenger ship 'Canterbury', among a small band of such travellers; talking their strange language of approach vectors, mass distribution charts and power output characteristics. All were as different as could be; of age, of race, of bone and skin and of status, yet all in common they were, for none of the other passengers would wish to listen to them, nor could they have understood their strange speak had they tried. None, but me. For my eye and ear being that of a story-teller, and a story-collector, was a role for which one must be proficient in many tongues and many disciplines.

To find such gatherings as this was the meat to my bread. For all the years have I crossed the great star empires and no play of actors, no trillion-budget Sim-O-Rama, no holo-mersive virtuality, could match the simple tales of spacer folk. And in my time have I listened and recorded such tales and stored them in my trusted MultiSens, later to transcribe into the oldest and simplest of recording forms; these written words which I put before you now.

As our voyage began, seven such travellers there were upon the Canterbury, though as nearer to Vale we ventured, certain I was that others would join. For four days and three nights would we fly; suspended in limbo, between reality and whatever realm for which one might wish to invent a name. For the 'hyspace' into which starships jumped in order to expedite their journey from star to star was no place at all; rather, it was something other than space. Some other plane which could not be travelled to, only travelled in.

And while all manner of sports, mental diversions and the studying of exam books would fill our days, by way of the restrictive licensing laws of the Interspacial Travel Commission, our precious evening hours would be spent in the lounge-bar between the hours of nineteen-hundred and twenty-three thirty shipboard time. For it was a fact widely accepted by spacers that only the pleasures of a well stocked bar could truly guard against that feeling of unpleasant monotony, of being nowhen at all, of the mind-warping possibilities of the perfect infinity of hyspace. So it was that evening, in the lounge after dinner, our group of travellers assembled. These seven characters were as new each to the other just exactly as they are to you now, and so before I make further progress, I think it reasonable to give you the same advantage as afforded them by sight and proximity and describe to you the qualities, appearance and bearing of each, as it seemed to me;

At first, to my right there sat The Smuggler. A Human he was, dressed in the clean white robes of one recently discharged from hospital. He appeared aged and showed the weariness of a life spent too long among the stars. While his body manifested a certain lack of vitality, it was behind his eyes where the true madness of the man was displayed. That look I had seen so many times in the eyes of men who had stared too long into void. This fellow had surely been tinged by this spacer's madness. But also there was another particular sickness about him which was not so obvious; on occasion he would wrap his hands and arms tightly at his body as though pushing against some great force. His face would contort and he would be lost to us for a moment until some pill or a swig or more of brandy would return him.

Beside him sat what one might call his opposite, for they were both in the business of trading goods, but the Merchant had remained true to the laws and regulations which I earlier spoke of. His appearance, in contrast to his neighbour, bore out the greater wisdom of abiding by these laws. For though he was almost as old as the Smuggler, his lifestyle demonstrated that there was more profit to be made in a long life of honest work than a short life of misdeed. The Merchant's suit was plain, pale yellow and of the highest quality. He was a man of wealth, it was clear, but also of good taste, which made one wonder if the two might be skills harmonious to good business.

And at the Merchant's side there sat a young woman; slim, athletic, quiet and calm. Her serenity appeared to come from a lack of something that the others possessed. A missing nervousness perhaps, arising from one who felt capable in any situation and who feared nothing. She had presented herself to us as the Assassin and had added little more, only to give us assurance that none of us need fear her, for none among us were on her list.

Then next in sequence came the Knight; a feline creature of the worlds where sentient life had descended from the felis catus family. He explained at length the nature of his Order, the details of which I will dutifully withhold from you so as to avoid cracking any eggs which may remain unhatched.

Then proceeding in the other direction from my left, sat the Miner. A quiet and thoughtful kind, with thick silver hair and a coat of plated metal. Of the group, he was the most jovial, quick to share a joke and seeming to quite enjoy being in company at last. He would hang on every word the others spoke, I noted, and would listen intently, as though trained as myself in the arts of transcription and reportage.

To the Miner's left side was an avian of some two metres in height, covered in shimmering brown feathers and towering above us all. Every word she uttered came delayed through the soulless interpretations of a translator box hung about her neck. Seldom did she speak, but the box continually chirped our words back to her through a headpiece. She sat perched on the edge of her seat with her talons gripping the hard metal frame of the bench. her eyes darted between us, and the quick jerky movements of her head made it hard to tell quite in which direction she was looking. When I had enquired at first as to her profession so that I may make record of it, she chirped a long burst of indecipherable twittering, which the interpreter box hesitantly broadcast as 'Slaver'. Perplexed as we were by this title, the avian declined any further questions.

Finally, at the very end was seated the Scout. She wore the gold uniform and insignia of the Galactic Astrogation Squadron. I was somewhat puzzled by her presence among this group as it was not usual to find military or federal personnel travelling on a civilian vessel, when a naval ship would have been available to her at no cost. Yet, her boots and her clothes were quite worn and not to the high standard one would expect for one of her profession.

And so, having thoroughly been appraised of all in our company, at hardly past the stroke of eight by the ship's clock, I came upon the reason by which I had attended to this party.
"For these three nights to pass more merrily," stated I, "and for the entertainment of all yet at a cost of nothing, save for the consumption of a few bottles, I propose that each of you tell your tale. For each mortal to be born and each to die must have one story to tell, and not less than one. And tell them shall you each in turn, and by your nature will each labour to outdo your fellows."

There was much chatter, but all appeared agreeable and if any found the suggestion objectionable, none made it known. And yet each in turn bore such modesty of their own humble story, sure that any account of their lives would be no great tale to be told. To this remarked I, "take my assurance, as one who has collected tales and scribed them for the pleasure of others, that it is equally as impossible for each of you to see the mystery which abounds in your own experience as it would be to know even the merest details of a complete stranger. And it is such mystery as is required to fill our long nights."

So this was our resolve, but quickly did arise the matter of where to start. To whom would fall the honour and the burden of beginning? At once, I withdrew a coin from my pocket; a relic of a long distant world it was, as was I. Upon one side was forged a star and on its reverse a queen.
"We will start at either my left hand or my right," said I. "For the Miner shall call it." All were again agreed and with great anticipation I tossed the coin toward the ceiling and the Miner did call, "stars!".

Upward the coin span and tumbled above my head, passing by planets and nebula in an eye's blink as the Canterbury hastened on though the upper dimensions of hyspace. And as the coin was once more gripped by gravity I reached out and snatched it tightly. At last I looked to my right, at the contorted and pained countenance of the Smuggler, revealing as I did so the upward face of the queen. And so began the first of the tales; the Smuggler's Tale, and what need of more words?

The Canterbury Tales Volume 1 by Luke Bellmason will be released on Amazon in June 2013, with a special edition hardcopy coming to Blurb soon after. It will feature three short stories, The Smuggler's Tale, The Merchant's Tale and the Assassin's Tale plus a special two-part story The Knight's Tale.

Guest Post: Vulcan Project

Please help me welcome today's guest blogger, A B Potts:

Personal Log

Ensign Jenny Terran

USS Earhart

It was supposed to be a simple assignment. Take one Vulcan delegate back to his homeworld, T'Khasi. No one mentioned the reason why. Pon farr.
 
As soon as he stepped into the shuttle though, I knew something wasn't quite right. Vulcans don't sweat as such, but his pallor suggested that he should be perspiring, and as he passed me by, he exuded extraordinary warmth. Our Chief Medical Officer, Dr Gates, followed the gentleman in and cast me a knowing glance. A simple nod confirmed to him that I had received the message and understood the situation fully.
 
Ambassador Sival seated himself with strained Vulcan dignity and closed his eyes in an attempt to shut the world out. Discretely, I lowered the temperature in the cabin a couple of degrees before turning to him.
 
"Welcome aboard, Ambassador. Can I get you anything before we depart?"
 
He looked up and I saw he had deep, dark brown eyes. They were unlike any Vulcan's I had ever seen. They were not cool and unyielding, but kindly, yet pained. They spoke of great intelligence and wisdom, so much so that I felt that they had the power to look right inside of me, deep into the very heart of my soul.
 
"Thank you. No."
 
Unlike his eyes, his voice was cold, but it wavered somewhat, and I reflected once more upon Vulcan emotions.
 
People say that Vulcans are without them, but they most certainly are not. Even when they are most in control, they are subject to their feelings, or whatever you wish to call them. They have merely learnt how to contain them, how to harness them. It is their voice that usually gives them away with slight rises and falls in their tones. They are subtle, but they are there. And as they become more passionate about a subject, those intonations become more discernable ... if you know what you are listening for. And I don't use the term 'passionate' lightly. Vulcans are a very passionate people with strong beliefs and morals. They merely express their passion differently to most other species.
 
I completed my pre-flight checks and we departed for T'Khasi. The journey would only take a few hours at Warp 4, which pleased me probably as much as it pleased him. His discomfort was obvious. He took in long, deep breaths to help concentrate his mind and retain control. I wondered what it was that had made him wait so long before returning to his homeworld and his mate.
 
The journey passed in silence for the first hour and all was going according to plan. Sival had settled himself into a meditation that seemed to soothe him. His breathing was measured and steady, and the coolness of the cabin helped, too, perhaps.
 
A sudden jolt to the shuttle soon put paid to that. It shook us both violently for a moment, and then the cabin lights flickered and dimmed as we dropped out of warp.
 
"What is the problem, Ensign?" asked Sival. As an engineer, his interest was piqued despite his
condition (or perhaps he was just impatient to be home).
 
I studied the readings and shook my head. I'm not an engineer and warp theory was never my strong point.
 
"I'm not sure. Indications are that we have sustained no damage to the engines, but they have ... stalled." It was the best term I could think of. "Computer, report please."
 
I know one doesn't usually say please to a computer, but I was always brought up to say please and thank you. It's a habit I can't break. I don't doubt that the Vulcan found it most illogical.
 
"The warp field was disrupted by an inverse graviton burst."
 
Suddenly, I was wishing I had taken that Engineering Extension Course after all.
 
"Is it ... still there?" I asked hesitantly.
 
"Negative. The phenomenon has passed."
 
Well, that was good news.
 
"So why can't I reinitiate warp drive?"
 
"Warp drive can not be initiated due to a misalignment in the dilithium reaction chamber."
 
I glanced at Sival. He was visibly becoming tense.
 
"How do I realign ... it?" I asked tentatively, not sure what the correct terminology was. The
computer threw me a huge spiel of instructions that I can't even begin to repeat. I stared at the console in front of me for what seemed like endless minutes while I assessed the situation.
 
"Computer," I asked. "Can you talk me through this procedure?"
 
It then gave me enough techno-babble to fill a four-year Academy course in Engineering.
 
"Okay, bearing in mind I am not an Engineer, can you explain that to me in simple terms please?"
 
More technobabble ensued. I had to simplify things even further.
 
"Computer, bearing in mind my level of expertise, am I likely to be able to correct this problem."
 
"It is unlikely that you will be able to achieve the correct alignment required," came the cool reply.
 
"What does unlikely mean? What are my estimated chances of success?"
 
"Fifteen percent."
 
"And how long will it take me?"
 
"There is insufficient data to make that estimation."
 
"Fine. Computer, please send out a distress call to Starfleet detailing our situation."
 
"Unable to comply. Communication relays have been damaged and are inoperable."
 
I sighed. This was not good. Sival needed to return to Vulcan as soon as possible. If I couldn't get the shuttle moving again and I couldn't call for help ... It didn't bode well.
 
"Please provide me with a full damage report to all systems."
 
The computer obliged and I sighed heavily. Everything seemed to be out of kilter and the
communications had suffered an overload, burning out and fusing circuits. It would take well over an hour to fix them. So, should I try to fix the communications or the warp drive?
 
"Computer. I need to make the corrections necessary to reinitiate warp drive. Where do I start?"
 
Behind me, Sival laughed hopelessly.
 
"My apologies, Ambassador." I felt I had to say it, but knew it would do no good whatsoever. In fact, it seemed to make matters worse. Sival dropped his head into his hands and began to--and I hate to say it, but he began to sob.
 
I felt awful. I had to do something to help this poor man, but what? And then it dawned on me.
 
"Ambassador?" I asked gently. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't you a specialist in some
engineering field or another?"
 
He wrapped his arms around his shoulders, hugging himself.
 
"Yesss," he hissed. "What of it?"
 
The pon farr was taking hold.
 
"Computer, could Ambassador Sival correct the problem?"
 
"Affirmative."
 
"And how long would it take an engineer like Sival?"
 
"Approximately twelve minutes."
 
My heart leapt. That was good news, but there was a problem.
 
"And in his current condition, how long?"
 
"Insufficient data."
 
I hated that response.
 
"Take a guess," I insisted, cursing it at the same time. Even a Vulcan will take a guess when pressed, but not a computer.
 
"Insufficient data."
 
I audibly growled.
 
"Less than an hour or more than an hour?" I pressed, turning and looking at Sival. In his current condition, he didn't look to be much good to anybody, but I asked anyway.
 
"It is likely to take more than an hour."
 
That was not what I wanted to hear. If I could just get Sival to think straight for a tad over ten minutes, we'd be okay, but how could I do that? I wandered over to the replicators.
 
"What are you doing?" Sival suddenly snapped.
 
"Under normal circumstances, this realignment would be a piece of cake for you, but while you are struggling with the pon farr-" he veritably growled at me. I merely held my hand up to silence him and continued, "-it will not be easy, so I need to help you focus, at least for a short while. I can't stop pon farr by any of the known methods," which was true. I didn't fancy combat or shock and the other option was definitely off the cards! "But I know that meditation can help so I'm replicating the necessary accoutrements to try and help initiate that."
 
I brought my replicated meditation kit over and began arranging it in the middle of the floor. I lit the meditation lamp and beckoned Sival to approach. Obediently, desperate for some respite from his symptoms, he came and sat on the floor opposite me.
 
"And if this does not work?" he asked.
 
"We'll cross that bridge if we come to it. Now ... to the matter at hand ..."
 
The air began to fill with the scent of burning incense and silence fell around us, draping us in a veil of peace and tranquillity. I found it very soothing as I sat with my eyes closed, my mind drifting to other places, and I assumed that Sival did too, but I was wrong.
 
"This isn't working!" he suddenly hissed, anger high in his voice.
 
"You must focus!"
 
"I can't!"
 
"Yes, you can. You are a Vulcan. I am a human. Your mind is more disciplined than mine so if I can do it, so can you! Now focus!" and I closed my eyes again. I thought he did the same, but suddenly, I felt his hands fold around my face!
 
I gasped and opened my eyes to find myself peering into his deep brown eyes.
 
His hands were hot and held me firmly. For a moment, worry gripped me. I thought he was going to kiss me or something stupid like that. That would be so awful--for him and for me! It would offend both our moral codes, but he didn't.
 
"I ... need ... your strength," he whispered.
 
"Then take it," I said softly.
 
Trepidation filled me because I knew what he was proposing, and how dangerous it was in his
condition, but I had to do something otherwise we would be stuck here and for goodness knows how long.
 
I folded my hands over his and our heads grew closer. One of his hands dropped into his lap and the other moved over my face to take up the customary position for a meld.
 
"My mind to your mind ..."
 
The dangers of this action gnawed at me, but we had to get the warp drive sorted if we were to get to T'Khasi in time for Sival.
 
"My thoughts to your thoughts ..."
 
So I let him in.
 
Suddenly, he was in my head ... and yet ... not in my head. It is hard to describe what I felt but it was like I could see--no, feel--both sides of the Vulcan. I could sense the immense mental strength and composure that this man had. It felt soothing and comforting to me. It gave me great confidence in his ability. It reassured me and I felt safe in his hands. But there was also the other side of the man, the side that was suffering. I could feel him screaming in anguish, writhing as if in immense pain, wailing and sobbing hysterically.
 
There were no visions or images to this, but I cannot explain what happened without using images.
 
Imagine, please, two Vulcans: a quiet, composed one and one in pain. The quiet Vulcan is standing silently by, unable to move, paralysed almost, while the wailing Vulcan is crying out. The quiet Vulcan cannot calm the wailing Vulcan. He cannot reach him, but I can. As I stretch out my hand and place it upon his shoulder, he snatches at it and draws me closer. He is wailing in my arms like a small child, crying hysterically on my shoulder. His hands are clawed with his torment as they grip me, but slowly, as I cradle him, he quietens. I cannot see the calm Vulcan now. He is out of my line of sight, but I know he is there. I just can't see him anymore and my attention is focused upon the wailing Vulcan, gently rocking him, stroking his hair as he clings to me.
 
I do not know how long this lasted but it was some time later that I awoke on the floor, curled up in the foetal position. My face was wet with tears and my eyes red and swollen. I think that Sival had emptied all of his anguish into me and that I must have been the one sobbing and crying in pain.
 
I clambered unsteadily to my feet and looked for Sival. He was sat in a corner, his arms wrapped about his knees, looking very pale and tired. He looked as though he was asleep.
 
Exhausted, I climbed back into the pilot's seat. Looking out of the forward fenestration, the stars were streaking by. Whatever had happened, it had enabled Sival to make the necessary repairs. He had done it.
 
I don't know how I managed to land the shuttle, but I did. I felt strange and disorientated, as though I had just woken up from a long, deep sleep but not refreshed. Lethargy clawed at me and kept dragging me back into slumber.
 
Over the next few days, my memories are muddled and fogged. I drifted aimlessly in a dreamlike state unable to regain full consciousness. My mind was filled with images and dreams that I will not share with you because I don't think they were my dreams. I think they were Sival's.
 
The first coherent memory I have was a number of days later. It was like finally waking up from the long, deep slumber, the memories of vivid dreams fading fast inside my head. Sival was there and a Vulcan Master. As I opened my eyes, I swear Sival smiled at me. This is nonsense, of course, but it felt like it.
 
I came to learn that what Sival had done was very, very dangerous indeed. He had created a link to draw from my strength, but with the pon farr clawing at his sanity, he had been unable to close it properly. Vulcan Masters were consulted, and it was they who intervened by effecting another joining of minds and an orderly separation. It is to them that I owe my sanity, but it did not end there.
 
I remained on T'Khasi for three weeks in total and spent many hours with a Vulcan priest. It was necessary that I undergo some mental training, not unlike that an unruly Vulcan youth would undergo, because the mere memory of the link meant that a little piece of it would always remain.
 
On the day that I left T'Khasi, a Starfleet shuttle arrived for me with Dr Gates on board. Sival and his wife came to say farewell. I had never met T'Bryn before but I knew her face well. They both thanked me and gave me a gift of a traditional Vulcan meditation lamp and crystal. I found the farewell very moving, but strangely found it easy to keep my composure as I said my goodbyes.
 
I cannot begin to describe how much I have learnt from this experience (beside the dangers of mind melds) and, dare I have the audacity to say it? I now consider myself to be just a little bit Vulcan.
 

* * *

 
For more Jenny Terran, follow the logs at http://jennyterran.blogspot.co.uk/ . The logs are updated weekly on Saturday mornings.


Jenny Terran is the creation of science-fiction author, A B Potts. No profits are made from the blogs, but the right of A B Potts to be identified as the author of these logs has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.    
Star Trek, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space 9, and Star Trek: Voyager are registered trademarks of Paramount Pictures and their respective owners; no copyright violation is intended.