As I start a new work schedule this week, and I have spent the entire weekend wading through my edit of "Jupiter Symphony," I will not have time to do my weekly blog posting. I'll make it up to you. Here:

I've touched previously on writing what you know, but I wanted to talk about growth and personal development, on figuring out what you love and then expanding on it.

There's a big trend right now to push doing what you love, as well as a very interesting counter argument to the trend, which states that the culture of doing what you love devalues honest workers and their labor. What I want to talk about is those honest workers, because when you get right down to it, writing is a very thankless job, with long hours and stress equal to any company job I've held. This message, then, is for those who have already decided to write, who know and appreciate the labor behind it.

In the writing of my first book, "Jupiter Symphony," I forced myself to come clean, copying down exactly what interested me in fiction, and then working to compose something that touched on those elements. In doing so, I accepted that I had no desire to write the great American novel, and that there was a niche genre that spoke to me, so that's what I would write. I'm not going to be Shakespeare, nor would I care to be. That doesn't mean I can't take my writing seriously, working professionally to compose a great story that is also relevant and entertaining.

My second book expanded on this strategy, picking out a single element that I felt strongly for and drawing it into a story, bringing greater focus to the point I was trying to make and weaving a tighter, more focused narrative. Though that story is still in the works (and needed a painful rewrite of the ending), I can already tell that I've taken the lessons learned from my first book and built upon them. This is really the thing to consider: finishing one book does not return you to an imaginary baseline, starting over from scratch with the next manuscript. Instead, reflect back on how your writing has changed over the course of tens of thousands of words, building a new platform from which to start anew.

I feel that in my case, this will also lead to expanding my focus to other genres. I originally had no interest in things outside of hard sci-fi and classical Japanese samurai tales, but lately I've had this weird itch, a growing rash to write something very human, something very personal. The things I love to write about have become my jumping off point, my way of expanding into new fields, broadening my knowledge and skill set, pushing me to seek greater challenges. It occurs to me now that this posting is very similar to some of my previous compositions, but that's really the point of this blog, isn't it? To expand and to grow, but to do so with a road map, touching on the fundamentals, using them to lay down steps to new stages of progress.

A.C. Harrison
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Editing is about 50% done at this stage, and I'm very proud of the progress I have made in the quality  of the work.

I feel an extended preview is appropriate. Enjoy!

***Please note, sometimes my blog is slow to upload my entire post. If you do not yet see the excerpt below, it should be up in a few hours.

            Ash had finished cutting Terry’s daughter free. She collapsed into his arms like an infant, seemingly more cartilage than bone. It seemed she had been tied for some time and her limbs had fallen asleep. She also looked severely dehydrated, her tongue swollen in her mouth. It must have been hard enough for these thugs to get water for themselves, much less to keep some to give to a hostage. Ash gently patted her on the cheek, trying to wake her from her stupor. Her eyelids fluttered and then slowly opened, her brown eyes glazed, shifting in and out of focus. Ash could feel the shallow breaths she was taking. Her mouth moved, but nothing more than a quiet rasping came out. Ash took the opportunity to reassure her.

            “I’m here with your father. We’re getting you out of this place,” he whispered.

            She nodded in assent.

            “Can you stand?” Ash asked.

            In response, she pushed off from his body and, quite slowly, with Ash holding her and wobbling the whole way, she reached the top. Though she was battered and beaten, she still stood with strong purpose, inner fire still burning deep. As Ash started escorting her to the back door, more shouting came from the hall.

            “That’s it, Terry! You ain’t never gonna see your daughter. I’m putting you down!”

            Ash had to pull her back as the sound of a pistol slide being racked echoed through the concrete block structure. He pulled his autorevolver from its holster and prepared to storm in to save Terry. In preparation, he leaned Terry’s daughter up against the wall next to the back door.

            “What’s your name?” Ash asked.

            “Angeline,” she whispered.

            “Angeline, I’m Ash. This is the exit. Go quietly and stay low. There’s a ditch across the field, use it to slip away. I’m going to help your father,” he said.

            “No, let me go with you,” she struggled to speak.

            Ash shook his head. In response, she reached out to grab hold of him, knowing she couldn’t move forward quickly, trying to detain him. He easily slipped back, her slender fingertips just brushing his coat.

            “Go. Now,” he ordered.

            Without waiting to see her response, he turned away and moved to the hall door while hugging the wall, hoping he still had time. There would be no subtlety. Taking a deep breath, he stepped out and filled the door frame with his body, casting his shadow down the dim hallway. He saw it fall on four gangsters who had Terry on his knees. One stood behind him with a pistol in his hand, preparing to press it to Terry’s head.

            “Yo, what the f--”

            Ash shot the pistol carrying one first. The round caught him in the chest, just below his throat and slightly to the left, slamming through the subclavical vein and ripping it from the jugular as the round deformed and the head mushroomed out, blowing out the back of his torso and splattering the floor behind him with a fan of blood, tissue, and bone fragments. The blowback of the round exiting the muzzle forced the cylinder to rotate, locking the next chamber into position and cocking the hammer for the next shot. Before the first man hit the ground, Ash was aiming at the man called Smokey to the left of Terry, who, along with his other living friend, was starting to draw a weapon of his own. On the first shot he had taken, Ash wasn’t conscious of the boom coming from his barrel and reverberating off the bare walls. This time he felt like his ears had collapsed inside his head as the pistol barked again, the barrel ejecting a second piece of supersonic lead which crossed the distance at 1,220 feet each second. The slug connected with Smokey’s left arm at the top of the bicep and smashed through the humerus, turned, and exited out the side of the same arm. Smokey’s face was a mask of pure pain as his mutilated arm went limp. His right hand dropped the autoloader he was pulling from his track pants, reaching across to clutch at his terrible wound. Ash didn’t have time to keep watching, as the last target now had his pistol out from under his shirt and was bringing it to bear. He rotated his torso, keeping his hands in the firing position, each degree of movement crawling by at an agonizingly slow pace.

Ash always though he was pretty quick in combat, but at this point he felt as if he was swimming through rapidly setting concrete. His front sight had cleared the right arm of the target. He kept turning, the reticle in his goggles now touching the very edge of the target’s torso. Ash dimly recognized that the other man’s pistol was now trained on him. Still, the burning red dot moved, until Ash finally couldn’t take it, his blood crashing, echoing in his skull, his lungs feeling like there was no air in the room. His finger slowly applied pressure to the trigger, the pad of his fingertip resting squarely in the middle. The finger of the man aiming at him was roughly jammed through the trigger guard, and he smashed the trigger to the back as quickly as he could. A blossom of fire emerged from the tip of the thug’s gun barrel and a searing hot lance slid past Ash’s torso on his right side, just below his armpit. Ash’s gun fired. The round pierced the gangster’s heart and exploded it, killing him instantly, his grimy, dirt body crumpling into the ground, a fountain of crimson trailing him to the cold concrete that reached up to embrace his corpse.

Time snapped back to normal and seconds stopped acting like hours. Smokey lay on the ground groaning, his arm a mess. The ground was slick with blood and tissue, and every new sound seemed distant and hazy. Terry, whom Ash admitted he had completely forgotten, came up from the ground and grabbed Smokey’s gun. Shouting could be heard coming from what Ash assumed was the main gymnasium. It seemed the people in the hall were only a fraction of the gang’s muscle. The rest now hurried to see what the commotion was. Terry came to his full height and moved towards Ash, the two heading towards the back room where Angeline waited. Ash’s eyes went wide as about twenty armed men started pouring into the hallway, a typhoon of thuggery and violence. The men at the front raised a wall of weapons, the muzzles a constellation of black holes, each one ready to snuff out life. Ash and Terry had nowhere to go, perfectly bracketed and exposed. Then, the room exploded.

Everything was suddenly happening very quickly. Goldilocks was trying to get access to the radio frequency being used by the officers that were coming after the nomad, while simultaneously watching what was occurring through the drone’s camera. She saw the ground vehicles draw up to the building Ash had gone into and officers emerge with weapons drawn. Two of them approached the main entrance, while one circled around the back. The other six moved into position along the side of the building, stacking up on some invisible marker. One of them toggled his radio, his mouth silently moving, probably in conversation with the helicopter from where orders seemed to originate. Oddly, the six officers then moved back towards the front of the building, then got low and shielded their faces. The helicopter moved into position perpendicular to the building, hovering over the field. Goldilocks could only watch as a missile suddenly went streaming off the right helicopter wing stub, the warhead accelerating much more quickly than she would have imagined. It struck the building dead center, though it seemed the fuse was set to detonate just before impact, blasting a man-sized hole in the side wall. Instantly the six officers were moving, sprinting over to the newly created entry hole, taking advantage of what must have been utter chaos inside.

Ash’s hearing slowly filtered back in, turning from muffled confusion to slightly more delineated sounds. He was laying on his back, covered in concrete fragments and dust. The hallway was dark, the air being full of floating debris and fine grime. His head was pounding incessantly and his vision kept blurring out of focus, taking conscious effort to correct. He knew he was bleeding from several wounds, but upon feeling them he found them to be superficial cuts, none requiring much more than stitches and glue. Realizing the need to get up and get moving, he rolled onto his stomach and tried to gather his knees up under his torso. Though they argued with him awhile, he finally was able to position himself so he could push up off the ground and reach a hunched over altitude. He saw Terry further down the hall, towards the locker room, laying on his side. Blood was streaming down the side of his head and a jagged piece of concrete could be seen on the ground next to him, the point of it covered in blood. After collecting and holstering his pistol, Ash made his way over to him, dropping to his knees once he got there, not entirely by choice. He rolled Terry onto his back, but before he could check on his vitals he heard shouting from behind him. Several high powered flashlights were pushing in from the outside, utilizing the hole that until recently had not existed. That would explain the explosion, then. Judging by the voices, movement, and equipment, the LAPD had arrived. The gang members at the other end of the hall had apparently recuperated, for as the first officer cleared the blast hole, several men fired on him. The officer dropped to a knee and rolled back out of the hallway.

Ash didn’t wait to see how this was going to play out, realizing his good fortune of the gang firing on the police would only last for a few moments. He gathered Terry up in a fireman’s carry and proceeded down the hall. Staggering drunkenly into the locker room, he lay Terry down on the ground in the better light as Angeline came to his side.

“Is he...” her words choked her.

“Not yet,” Ash said, his speech slow.

Ash checked Terry’s pulse, which was dull and off tempo. Terry groaned and his eyes opened, revealing dilated pupils. Shaking his head to clear the cobwebs, Terry spoke in a low, halting tone.

“My leg.”

Ash started to move to Terry’s organic leg, but Terry grabbed his wrist to stop him.

“No. Other one. Hidden compartment. Back of the calf. Medicine. Stims,” Terry managed to squeeze out the words.

Ash looked to Angeline. Moving quickly, she detached the leg from its socket, flipped it over, and activated a hidden latch which opened a recessed compartment. Inside was a single emergency treatment kit. Extracting a syringe, Angeline quickly administered it to her father, then reattached the cybernetic limb. Terry seemed to calm. Ash doubted the medicine was already in effect, but just the knowledge of it being in his system probably helped. Ash and Angeline helped Terry to stand, taking up positions on either side of him. Based on the volume, the gunfight in the hall was intensifying, several stray rounds finding their way into the locker room and smashing into the rear block wall. Time to go.

The three of them burst out the back door and right into the waiting arms of an officer left to guard the escape. Ash had been in front, and he and the policeman became tangled together, falling to the ground in a rather ungraceful heap, limbs heading in all different directions. Angeline was able to keep Terry up, but couldn’t help Ash, the weight of the wounded older man taking all her strength. The toppled officer reacted more quickly than the shell chocked nomad, coming up into a crouch. The officer revealed that he also wasn’t a rookie, not moving to draw his pistol, knowing full well he could get to his sidearm in time given the space between the two combatants. Instead he launched himself at Ash, who was still only in a seated position, his legs uselessly extended straight in front of him on the ground.

Pushing off the ground hard, the cop’s shoulder slammed into Ash’s torso. Though the target had been the nomad’s solar plexus, the shoulder struck a little high and to the side. Even so, the force knocked Ash flat on his back, stunning him. It was all he could do to keep from striking the back of his head on the ground, which would have ended the fight immediately. Keeping his weight on Ash’s torso to prevent him from moving, the officer drove his right knee into Ash’s sternum, pinning him to the floor. With the officer’s body over him, Ash couldn’t bring his right arm across to draw his pistol, nor could his left arm raise up high enough to reach, the angle being impossible. He saw the officer’s right hand go to his holster and start to draw. As the black handgun started to emerge from its polymer case, a blur of dull metal flashed through the air and crashed into the officer’s right forearm, causing him to cry out and roll off to Ash’s right. The nomad wondered if any of the cop’s bones were broken as he rolled to the left and came up on his feet, still woozy. Standing next to him was Terry, balanced on one leg, his cybernetic limb held in his hands at the ankle as an impromptu baseball bat, Angeline behind him holding onto his shirt to stabilize him

“Nice party trick,” Ash gasped.

“Thanks. It makes a pretty good bong, too.”

Angeline quickly helped her father reattach the limb as Ash unholstered his autorevolver and walked over to the officer, not knowing what he could do to incapacitate him that also wasn’t possibly fatal. Before he could reach him, though, the cop toggled the throat microphone attached to his radio.

“At the back! He’s at the-”

His cries were cut off as Ash pistol whipped him upside the head, the butt of the gun making a sharp crack as it struck the officer’s left temple, leaving him still on the ground. The three escapees heard that the gunfire inside was dying down, becoming more sporadic. Alerted to the activity at the rear of the building, the police would mop up the gangbangers and already be on their way. It was time to escape. Ash and Angeline once again helped the wounded Terry get to walking, but they hadn’t gone more than a few meters before the sky was filled with a screeching, thumping cacophony of such violence that it seemed to mark the arrival of the four horsemen. Looking up through his goggles, Ash’s mouth went dry as a fully armed police attack helicopter rapidly bled off altitude, its chin mounted gun tracking their movements. Ash’s party came to a halt, the sense of futility pushing their feet into the ground, preventing them from moving. Then, for the second time that night, and two times more than he felt necessary, Ash was caught in an explosion.

Goldilocks hated being so blunt, but time was once again standing opposed to her and so she had to make do. From inside the police drone system she started thinking of a way to access the controls of the drone she was currently using to watch the action unfolding below. Though she could remotely view information from the drone, and even intercept commands being sent to it, she did not have the software that drone controllers used to directly interface with the units and operate them manually. It would take far too long to try to gain root access on a console that had the software; she needed a faster solution. Deciding the only option left to her was a desperate gamble, she opened her console and readied a command. As the drone continued its automated orbit, she waited until it was roughly lined up with the helicopter and fired off her command, which switched off the drone. The neurons inside her brain sparking in harmony with the electrical pulses of the 1s and 0s of her interface, she switched drone feeds just in time to see if her gamble paid off. This new drone was lower and further west of the action, but it was facing towards the attack helicopter. From up above, her original drone came out of the sky in a parabolic arc, the engines dead and the on board computers no longer sending inputs to the control surfaces. It was only on the screen for a heartbeat, but in that time it passed low over the blades of the armed helo and right into the low pressure vortex created by the spinning maw. The drone nosed over and smashed into the middle of the rotor assembly, right into the Jesus nut, careening off and crashing into the ground next to Ash and party, bursting into a gigantic fireball.

The helicopter, meanwhile, staggered from the blow and listed dangerously to port. The pilot reacted quickly, killing the primary rotor system and feeding full power into the four directional thrusters, but it was too late. He tried to compensate for the tilting vehicle, but that only served to push it faster in the direction of its lean, still descending and now accelerating laterally. Realizing there was no escape, he killed the starboard thrust, hoping to at least orient the craft vertically before it struck ground. He nearly accomplished his goal, the craft almost completely righted by the time the ground welcomed the collection of titanium, steel and carbon bits and pieces that were no longer on speaking terms. Lacking any sound from her drone, she imaged a huge noise must have radiated out from the impact. The landing gear smashed upwards into the frame, as designed, and the wing pylons separated from the chassis, taking excess energy with them as they pin wheeled off into the darkness.

Countless fragments spiraled off in all directions, a galaxy of glittering debris forming as the helo bounced once, hit the ground again, and then rolled over onto its left side, coming to a crumpled rest several dozen meters from where it had been holding station in the sky. Smoke, fire, and raining debris obscured the cameras, but the infrared clearly showed three small forms huddled on the ground, now cautiously rising up, now crossing the field as quickly as they could, given their injuries. Officers came storming out of the back of the building, weapons drawn. Goldilocks knew that after this stunt, her access to the drone system would be cut off and the authorities would begin tracing a path back to where her hacking had originated from. Wanting to help as much as she could and knowing she had nothing to lose, she shrugged to herself and switched off all the drones, wishing she had another camera to watch the chaos that was certainly unfolding.



            First Ash and company had been blinded by the spotlight which erupted from the bottom of the helicopter which had caught them outside. Then, before he could do more than switch inputs on his goggles to a more useful setting, something had smashed into the helicopter and then hit the ground near them, sending up a fireball and rocking them with a shock wave. The helicopter itself then fell to earth and divested itself of many pieces, though the crew cabin itself had survived. The air was filled with flying bits of metal, and Ash thanked the stars that they were just out of range of both crashes so as to receive only small pieces of burning debris raining down on them. Some of the pieces cut or bumped, but they were not pieces of high speed shrapnel and so they didn’t have to worry about being perforated excessively. Realizing fortune was smiling on them, they took off across the back field, officers now pouring out of the building in hot pursuit.             It was at that point that things for the trio started to go from intense to hold onto your ass crazy. It seemed that the police drones that were so ubiquitous patrolling the city and assisting officers had decided to become kamikaze pilots and were falling out of the sky all around them. Officers dove for cover and Ash, Terry, and Angeline ran a serpentine pattern, making their way to safety as quickly as they could. Behind them more huge crashes echoed one after another as the terrain in front of them was illuminated by the fires now burning behind them, their shadows becoming long and disfigured by the low angled light, alien forms flitting across the broken landscape like visitors from another world.

They hit the ditch Ash and Terry used previously and crouched low, taking a moment to catch their breath, heavy panting coming from Angeline and Terry while Ash tried to control his heart rate, forcing himself to inhale all the way to the bottom of his stomach, sucking air through his nose and expelling it from his mouth. Wordlessly, they proceeded along the ditch back towards the car, the chaos of the school now dying down. They remained silent until they felt they were far out of earshot, hoping they had given their pursuers the slip, half expecting another helicopter to come screeching out of the sky above them. As Terry came off of his adrenaline high, the injuries he had sustained in the escape started to catch up with him and the party was forced to slow in order to accommodate him. Finally, he came to a stop nearly two thirds of the way to their destination, sitting on the cracked asphalt of what was once a convenience store parking lot, the giant white, orange and green sign hanging at a precarious angle from the front of the building. Ash crouched down in front of him, but Terry waved him off.

“I’m okay,” he gasped. “Let me--catch my--breath.”

            Ash’s brow furrowed in consternation. Terry’s right hand was clutched to his left flank against his torn shirt. Blood ran slowly down his fingers, turning into black spots as the drops landed in a patch of dirt next to him. Ash reached forward and pulled Terry’s hand away from the wound, causing the older man to wince in pain. As the palm came away, Ash saw the damage Terry had sustained. A long sliver of metal, which seemed to have sheared off of either one of the drones or the helicopter, was protruding from his side. The segment of edge that was still exposed appeared razor sharp. A fine stream of red seemed to glide elegantly over it before forming into a bead at the end, hanging momentarily before dripping off, the distant city lights captured in the orb for the split second it was in the air. Ash looked at the rate at which blood was seeping from the puncture and realized Terry must have already lost quite a bit of the stuff. He was going to need help quickly, though to Ash it appeared that no major arteries or veins were hit.

            “Does it go all the way through?” Ash asked.

            Terry shook his head as a negative, unable to speak.

            “Good. Keep pressure on it. We have no choice but to move you,” Ash explained. “Staying here is just going to put you in a worse position.”

            Terry nodded, and Ash appreciated that he wasn’t wasting his breath talking. Angeline had become very pale, tears welling in her eyes, though she kept them from running down her cheeks. She looked stunned, unable to speak. Ash got under Terry’s left arm and hoisted him back to his feet. The three shuffled along back towards the car, with Ash feeling as if each step only covered a few inches at best, though he knew logically it wasn’t true. They finally turned a corner and laid eyes on the Charger, a fine coat of dust already having settled on the body in the short time they were away to rescue Angeline. Ash turned to her.

            “Take the keys out of my right back pocket and open the back door,” he instructed.

            She did as he asked, swinging the door wide. Ash laid Terry down inside so he was supine across the rear bench, though the rearward bars of the roll cage did severely cut into the available space. Angeline climbed into the front passenger seat as Ash walked around the vehicle to the driver’s side. Opening the door, he took one last look back at the piece of suburbia which had become part drug town, part mass grave. An eerie feeling crawled up his spine as he realized the police response in the area didn’t make sense if they were only trying to bust low rent gang bangers. He also didn’t think Terry was their intended target, and he certainly knew they wouldn’t waste their time to rescue a kidnapped girl who didn’t belong to a family of wealth and influence. There wasn’t any money in those actions, nor would there be reason for them to go out of their way to such an area strictly to flex their muscle. Sliding into the driver’s seat and shutting the door, Ash was forced to admit that the only reason for what had just occurred was his presence in Los Angeles. He turned the key and the big V8 grumbled awake, echoing in the alleyway, as Ash took off, the three survivors fleeing the scene.


A.C. Harrison
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It turns out that I'm not a big fan of editing. Not my work, not other people's. It isn't due to any perceived failing. I like to see where I can improve and then work towards that goal. I think I just find the process overwhelming and, to be honest, a bit tedious. The editing phase of "Jupiter Symphony" as been a protracted one, in large part because I have trouble sitting down and forcing myself to work on the text. This means I'm approaching editing as I did writing, with a clean slate, making it necessary for me to really plan out my editing time and to set clear expectations for myself, forming new habits so I can get the darn thing done, which is looming ever closer (thankfully).