Category: Isaac's Story

The Deal, a Prequel Novella to Isaac's Story, Is Out Now!

7/7/2015

One plan to ruin them all…

Gang leader Zero knows a good opportunity when he sees one. When he and his gang are offered a job to do a favor for a mob boss, they jump at it. All they have to do is pay off a rival for a place in the larger organization.

But Zero has a plan. He thinks they can get what they want, make their new boss happy, and keep the cash in the process. It won't take long to find out if his plan is idiotic, brilliant, or suicidal.

In addition to being a new cast of characters in a new story, this also covers Kazumi's arrival in London and her first job for Essex Blood. And more of Kazumi is always a good thing.

Happy Reading

The World I've Created (And My Lack Of Sufficient Optimism)

6/5/2015

I've been too pessimistic in my projections.

I imagined a world with battle cyborgs that could take the terminator in a fight. I gave it ubiquitous augmented reality (and the surveillance that requires) and fantastical software constructs that seemed human. There are 3D printers for everything from clothes to food to organs, and its all cheap and easily accessible.

This future seemed too soon at a mere twenty years from now.

I underestimated it. Because of course I did.

First, something I got exactly right:

The Microsoft Hololens is Realmware V1. Watch some of the tech videos and the interviews with people who've used it and compare it to the descriptions throughout Isaac's Story. It's the same damn thing, and it's awesome. Right now it's stuck (more or less) in one place but they'll move it out into the world soon enough.

Here's the thing I missed - EMDrive

At worst this is a misunderstanding of test results. At best it's a fucking warp drive.

Assuming there is an effect, and assuming three or four different teams of scientists aren't all wrong, my guess is it'll fall somewhere in the middle. But somewhere in the middle utterly changes the future in almost every conceivable way, and in the near future. Right in the middle of the timeline for my series. Because of course it does.

If this thing works as well as the teams are tentatively saying it does (note: they haven't released a paper and this hasn't been properly peer reviewed, which means it isn't true and is probably a load of crap) then we get to go interplanetary, and soon. We can think about doing crazy things like sending probes to other star systems. We can put things in orbit for less and keep them there indefinitely for practically nothing.

We basically get a first generation Star Trek Impulse drive, and I'm going to be a space pirate haunting the asteroid belt mining colonies, because we'll have those and we'll have them within my lifetime.

Let's play with the narrative of this fever dream a little more, shall we.

Let's say the warp bubble they think they've detected is real. This means we've found another way of creating a warp field that doesn't require Alcubierre drive energy weirdness, and that changes every-damn-thing. It might not happen in my lifetime, but we'll go to the stars. Shit, if I eat right and exercise I might get to be a space pirate in another star system.

What's actually going to happen is this: they're all going to find out they were wrong or lying (as odd as that would be) and this is going to end up being a fun thing we thought about for a bit before moving on to making better rockets.

But if it isn't, if it's true and works as described...

They're running more and better tests at Nasa in a few months, at which point things get boring again or they get really interesting. My future might be implausible because I wasn't seeing Star Trek on the horizon.

Quick, go buy my shit before it becomes hilariously short sighted.

Briefly, on the topic of my shit:

The next book out the gate is a novella prequel to Isaac's Story: London, called The Deal. It's done editing and waiting on a cover, but I'm going to send it to the mailing list in a bit. Should be released in a couple of weeks. It'll be followed by the gigantic The Line about a month later.

Go read a book.

The City

9/3/2015

Book 3 of Isaac's Story: London is out with the Advance Reader Group, and I'm nervously waiting for them to come back to me and tell me how much it sucks. Because that's how the writer brain works.

This series was always about my future London, an enormous place filled with technological marvels and millions of small stories. It's how I think of actual cities I've visited: we see the large picture - the whiz bang, the shiny - but the place isn't defined by that. The distinctive feel every city has when you roam the streets is built of those small stories, the daily interactions between normal people.

The guy going to work oblivious to the world, stepping over someone blind drunk from the night before. The guy is late on his rent and his relationship is tanking. The drunk was celebrating a fantastic result to a risky deal. Maybe he's a drug dealer, or a trader.

An electronics shop opening the security gate first thing in the morning. Staff are tired, bleary-eyed, already looking forward to closing time. They never look up at their city anymore, and so don't see the photography studio that just opened across the street, or the model sitting topless in the second floor window on her smoke break.

A terrorist attack rocks the city. The citizens pause for a few minutes as they work out an alternate route to work to avoid the confusion.

These are the stories that give these places their personality. Depending on where you are in the city, a street can go from sleepy and quiet to hectic and loud in the space of a few minutes, and empty out as quickly. Other cities seem to never stop; go out at midday or 2 in the morning and the street is equally crowded. Only the outfits have changed.

For Book 3 I wanted to take someone who wasn't numb to the city yet, an outsider arriving for the first time. Kris grew up in a fundamentalist town, a compound closed off from the world. He has very little knowledge of the London he's about to discover, and I wanted to see the world through his eyes. He gets to see the world from the point of view of the average person, and also sees it from the heights of the most powerful.

Along the way - of course - there are noble murderous cyborgs (the best kind), genetically altered humans with tails, a blimp, explosions, conspiracies, and a longing for things that can no longer be.

Here's the cover:

I'm looking forward to hearing what people think.

I'm off to write. Go read a book.

Where's Isaac, dammit?

6/1/2015

(I've been quiet for a little while because I had a lot of stuff to do and the amount of time I had to do it in refused to expand. I still have a lot of stuff to do, time still won't bow to my whim, and I'd rather be writing books. So... I'll probably continue being scarce for a little longer)

This post is here to be something I can point people to when they ask the question in the title.

Hypothetical Reader: "The series is called Isaac's Story: London. But I've read some of it now and nobody in it is called Isaac. Huh?"

Me: Isaac shows up in book 6.

Hypothetical Reader: "But I only bought the thing because I wanted some hot Isaac-based action."

Me: You don't know who Isaac is.

HR: "That's my kink, reading about guys called Isaac getting into near-future thriller scenarios. This is false advertising."

Me: Just imagine the protagonist is called Isaac, if that's your thing. Also, that's a really specific kink. There are a limited number of options where that specific set of circumstances is going to come up.

HR: "You'd be surprised."

Me: I've just imagined another page of conversation with a hypothetical reader I'm making up right now. Like, as I'm typing. And it's given me an idea for a story, which I now have to outline.

HR: "What?"

Me: I'm just saying, I'm pretty messed up. You'd be surprised at what surprises me.

HR: "Answer me, writer-man! Where's Isaac?"

So, where's Isaac?

I was surprised when readers started asking this question, because I don't understand cause and effect. Or humans. I really don't get humans.

When I came up with Isaac's story it was set a lot further into the future than the current series. 250 to 300 years, instead of 20. I sketched out five books, each self-contained but leading to the next, with recurring characters and an obvious series arc. The series is called Isaac's Story: Hong Kong, and I've outlined and part-written the first in that series (the title is Dark Age, for now).

But I needed to know what the near future would be like to understand the world. I needed to know what led to Isaac's story. So I sketched out the future, doing the necessary research and fleshing out how I saw the next few decades going, and enjoyed every moment of it. I fell in love with this world I'd built and I knew I'd have to write some stories there, if only to get to feel it, to breathe the air of this future London and watch the people go about their lives.

So I wrote something (The Bridge) which let me play in my new sandbox. And then I wrote something else (The Algorithm), and I set it 5 years later. The city was different, colder and darker. I had a new series, with an arc that followed the growth and change of a city, rather than a single person. I had recurring characters that I wanted to play with and observe, and I knew where the world was going already. Thanks to that original idea I already knew the ending.

Isaac's Story: London is a prequel to a series that hasn't been written. It's a look into the foundations of a world that you haven't read yet. That you can't (as of this post) read, because it's mostly in my head. I wrote it because I felt like it, and because I could. Thanks to doing this all myself, nobody could stop me.

Was it a good idea though, writing a prequel to something that doesn't exist yet?

That depends on what I'm trying to achieve. I'm in this for the jollies. I write because I have things in my head that want to come out, and it's either this or talking to the cat. People don't take you seriously if you tell long, complicated, action-packed stories to cats, so instead I've decided to write it down. (To be honest, people don't really take it seriously when you write it down either)

So yes, it was a good idea, because the books are good and I enjoyed writing them. One day the series will be a prequel to something that exists and the name will make sense. As I don't have a million readers hanging on my every word I think this is the perfect time to do silly stuff like this anyway.

So there, that's where Isaac is. He's in the future, waiting for me to finish with the backstory that led to his birth.

Hypothetical reader: "Does Isaac at least make a cameo?"

Me: No, because he hasn't been born yet.

HR: "But I want some Isaac."

Me: It's getting kind of weird that this conversation is still happening. You don't exist, and I've got better things to do than speak to a voice in my head.

HR: "I do exist. Once you imagined me I became a presence in the great unconscious cloud. I am an idea, and ideas never truly die, even if they never truly lived."

Me: This is where I start with the cat waxing, right?

HR: "That cat lives here too. As a metaphor it gets to live in the heights of the unconscious cloud, lording it over mere hypotheticals like me. Oh, to one day work my way up to Metaphor."

Me: Now I'm thinking of a story based around this brain-fart, and I need to get back to work.

HR: "If you write the story, and put me in it, will I then get to see Isaac?

Me: If you're an idea from my mind, and so is Isaac, then he should already be there.

HR: "You're overthinking this."

Me: That's what I was trying to say! Bugger, now I'm getting into an argument with... whatever you are.

HR: "I'm a manifestation of your---"

Me: Shhh. They don't need to know.

Me again: You're just trying to keep me talking, aren't you? To keep you alive.

Me again: HR, are you there?

Me again: ...

Well, that got weird. Um, I guess I have to go. And, you know, read a book.

Or something.

The Deal, a Prequel Novella to Isaac's Story, Is Out Now!

The World I've Created (And My Lack Of Sufficient Optimism)

The City

Where's Isaac, dammit?

So, where's Isaac?

C.L. Walker

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