Tag: Rag & Muffin

‘Rag & Muffin’ Sneak Peek

Featured image: Character designs from Magical Girl Ore.

This is a section from the draft of Rag & Muffin, my next novel to appear after Dead to Rites. This passage may or may not be in the final version in this form:

Only one spot in Godtown did not swell with the cosmic beat nor touch the underside of heaven, but remained dark—a mere part of earth or perhaps of something lower than earth. That was the Talbot Refinery, which stood near the Green Line on the edge of the Elysian-occupied West End.

In the refinery, workers—mostly outcaste marjaras unable to find decent jobs anywhere else—committed the worst blasphemy known in this world: They took the Tuaoi Stones from the mines with which the Elysians had profaned the sacred Vindhya Mountains, and they performed unspeakable deeds to alter those pure crystals into something base and ignoble in order to feed them to the Elysians’ demon-possessed automata.

More powerful than any mundane science, the magic called Runetech had made the Elysians the masters of the world, but the ghosts in their machines hungered for profaned Tuaoi Stones. Thus, in the midst of the holy city, the Talbot Refinery was an outcrop of hell, and it alone could resist the flurry of religious ecstasy and exultation that beset the rest of Godtown every morning.

Just as Meru closed, Talbot’s portal, like a mouth of the underworld, opened to swallow a long string of buses containing the workmen for the morning shift. Like giant jacks dropped from the sky, anti-tank caltrops flanked the road leading to the refinery’s heavily fortified entrance. In a booth at the gate, an underpaid and overworked human babu did his best to check the workers’ and drivers’ papers, which were handed to him—with much shouting and babbling—through half-opened windows along the buses’ sides.

Looming over it all like a colossus and casting its stark and menacing shadow across this scene was an enormous machine, vaguely man-shaped. Thick, bulky armor enclosed it, and it bristled with weapons ranging from conventional autocannons and missile-launchers to rune-powered accelerators and psi-blasters. Every once in a while, one of the intricate symbols carved into the machine’s armor glowed blue or green, letting all below know that it was alive—and that it was watching them. Somewhere deep in its guts, dangling from anti-shock suspensors, was a thing that used to be human.

Continue reading “‘Rag & Muffin’ Sneak Peek”

Rag & Muffin Continues; Art; And Other Stuff

Featured Image: “Magical Girl Uraraka” by Hannahsrrex.

I haven’t posted for two weeks, but I have reasons or at least excuses.

Partly, the more I get settled into being a published author with a book out and two on the way, the less I have time (or interest, even) in watching and reading other stuff to review. This is perhaps inevitable.

Also, my computer is on the fritz. I’ve long known that this little laptop, though it has been a good machine all things considered, is well past its sell-by date. Recently, I managed to fry its keyboard with spilled beer (yes, really) so I can no longer type on it without a peripheral keyboard.

Also, it has stopped talking to my printer for reasons I’ve been unable to figure out. It’s possible the printer itself is to blame, but I doubt it, since all its diagnostics claim it’s working just fine and communicating with the network just fine. It’s just that the computer can’t see it. Turning off all the firewalls and antivirus software doesn’t appear to help, and beyond that I don’t know what to do about the problem. So I effectively have no printer, which will become a problem in the near future when I get back the edit requests for my last submission.

Basically, the computer needs replaced, and has for a few years, but I don’t really have the money for it, especially since I just had to replace my car, which I totaled in a flood. Part of my disappearance here came from the time it took to make sure everything was backed up.

Rag & Muffin Update

Speaking of which, as I’ve mentioned before, Rag & Muffin is finally out of the house. I expect it to need more editing before it’s ready to publish, but it is at least underway. It has taken an embarrassingly long time to get that novel completed and submitted, but I have reasons/excuses for that, too—it is my first novel, though I have two others preceding it to publication, and a first novel always takes the longest. It also took an enormous amount of rewriting and reshaping, partly for reasons I don’t say in public. Although its basic premise—”Fancy Nancy in Dungeonpunk India with guns and Kung fu”—is quite silly, it’s a very personal novel in some ways and was difficult to finish. The earliest drafts were quite lurid; they were torturous to write and I’m glad to have them behind me, but I’m comfortable with the content in this penultimate version I recently sent to my editor, even if it contains more than my usual number of cuss words.

Next Project

I am trying to peel myself away from meddling with Rag & Muffin while my editor has it and instead turn my attention to Son of Hel, which will require more research to do it justice.

I’ll do a whole post on this in the near future, but one thing I will say is that, as I look at the various interpretations and reworkings that have been done of Santa Claus legends, I’m surprised at how few modern interpretations—none of them that I know of—want to connect Santa Clause back to the original St. Nicholas. Since nobody else wants to do it, I figure that’s one contribution I can make. My plan is to conflate as many characters and concepts of Santa lore as possible, so the monk who was bishop of Myra has also become the reindeer-breeding gift-giver with an army of elves in his workshop, accompanied by several interesting companions ranging from a Russian snow maiden to a half-demon to a murderous butcher.

‘Rag & Muffin’ Completed and Off to My Editor

I just now finished revising Rag & Muffin. I have submitted it to my editor, so it’s out of the house for the time being.

Now I can get on to the research phase for Son of Hel. Yay!

Rag & Muffin
Phase:Revising
Due:5 years ago
100%

‘Rag & Muffin’ Progress Update

The revision of the book is finished except for one chapter, which contains the action sequence that was giving me trouble.

Once that is done, it’s ready to go to the editor. Then it’s final edits and submission.

Rag & Muffin
Phase:Revising
Due:5 years ago
95%

‘Rag & Muffin’ Progress Update

My next book, Rag & Muffin, is coming along well. I didn’t make the goal (big surprise) I had of finishing it last weekend, mostly because some of the action sequences at the climax are in heavy need of rewriting.

The rooftop chase scene with the cannnibal cyborg only needed light rewriting, and the sword battle with the demon-possessed robot armed with giant chainsaw-scissors was mostly okay, as was the wire-fu knife fight—but the running gun battle with the robot soldiers of the Chinese mafia is a complete mess.

As some of you know, I was working on Rag & Muffin even before I wrote Jake and the Dynamo. The stories bear some similarities in that both are about fourteen-year-old boys tagging along after violent, superpowered girls, but Rag & Muffin is considerably more bloody and brutal, and less funny.

So what took me so dang long to get this ready to publish? There are several reasons including some I don’t divulge to strangers on the internet, but the least private reason is that I needed to develop and polish some writing skills before the book could even be in a condition to publish.

Now that I have one novel out and another off to the publisher and coming out in a few months, finishing Rag & Muffin feels easy. Yes, it needs some work, but finishing it is no longer the insurmountable difficulty it once appeared to be.

Rag & Muffin
Phase:Revising
Due:5 years ago
75%

‘Pretty Cure’ Holds a World Record

This is kind of old, but it escaped my notice at the time. Apparently, the film Hug! Pretty Cure, Futari Wa Pretty Cure the Movie, now holds the Guinness World Record for most magical girl warriors in a single film, as reported on the Guinness site.

They accomplished this by stuffing every single Cure into the movie, a total of fifty-five. To acknowledge the record, Guinness arbitrarily required that each girl had to have dialogue and participate in combat.

This is such an oddball record, it’s unlikely that any other movie will beat it—unless it’s another Pretty Cure Film.

Update

In other news, I have decided I am going to make a more ambitious goal for the completion of the revision phase of Rag & Muffin. I believe it is possible to have it done by the end of this weekend.

I just finished revising chapter ten. There are twenty chapters. From here on, the book will need more work, but that’s still only five chapters a day.

Once I finish this, I can send it out the door to my editor and get to work on the research and outlining phase of Son of Hel, which I’m quite looking forward to.

Rag & Muffin
Phase:Revising
Due:5 years ago
54%

‘Rag & Muffin’ Now Underway!

I am now revising the draft of Rag & Muffin, the next novel on my list. The early chapters need the least work, so it will go quickly for a while, but will become slower later on.

I’m giving myself two months to have a workable draft followed by a month each for editing and proofing. The final proofing will be after my editor sees it, so that self-appointed deadline will have to be flexible.

Anyway, a highly optimistic date for final proofing and submission will be about the beginning of November.

Rag & Muffin
Phase:Revising
Due:5 years ago
13%

Brief Update (and art by SushiyamaArt)

Featured image: “Miraculous Ladybug” by SushiyamaArt.

I was going to write the review for Made in Abyss this afternoon, but I instead volunteered to put up Christmas decorations at a church, which I thought would take an hour and instead took all day.

This morning, I was making good progress on Jake and the Dynamo, so I’m going to spend my evening going back to that instead of writing a review I wouldn’t get finished tonight anyway.

In other news, I notice the third season of Miraculous Ladybug has got started. I know the first episode has aired, but I’m not quite sure if it’s available in English yet.

I haven’t even seen season 2 yet. I feel like I’m really behind on the shows I want to watch and discuss—but then again, I’m trying to finish a second novel over here, so I can’t watch TV all the time.

By the way, my plan for publication goes like this: I want to get volume 2 of Jake and the Dynamo out, and my plan after that is to put out volume 1 of Rag & Muffin, which needs heavy editing but is entirely drafted. I haven’t thought ahead beyond that. I may or may not also have a short story in an anthology in the near future.

Excerpts from the Rag & Muffin Lexicon

Acharya: Master, guru.

Alta: A red dye used to paint the edges of a woman’s feet during some religious ceremonies.

Angithi: A brazier made from a clay-lined container in which coals or other fuels are placed.

Antavasin: Pupil, student.

Arx Ciceronis: A large, walled fortress on Godtown’s west end. Home of the city’s more well-to-do Elysian expatriates.

Drug Doll: Slang, a disparaging term for a HYBRID.

Elysian Empire: A resurrected Roman Empire ruling approximately half the globe. The Elysian Empire formed out of the Holy League following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire at the Battle of Lepanto, but did not attain worldwide significance until the late eighteenth century.

Heaven Seed: A potent entheogen produced in a gland attached to the visual cortex of a HYBRID.

Hybrid: One who is half human and half MARJARA. Hybrids are always female and have a maximum lifespan of approximately sixteen years. Frequently installed in temples as KUMARIS.

Kumari: Literally, “virgin.” A polite form of address for an unmarried girl or woman, equivalent to “Miss” in English. Alternatively, a HYBRID installed in a temple as a living goddess. Alternatively, a specific goddess, Kanya Kumari.

Lakh: A hundred thousand.

Marjara: Earth’s second sapient race besides the human. Unlike a human, who has an “invisible caste,” a marjara has distinct physical traits determined by his VARNA and JATI.

Paan: a stimulant created from a combination of betel leaf and areca nut. Produces a characteristic orange stain in the mouth.

Pishacha: A shapeshifting demon that haunts cremation grounds and feeds on the living.

Runearmor: An armor suit created with RUNETECH. Its operator must be temporarily dead in order to communicate with the unclean spirits trapped in the suit’s runes.

Sammohana: The power of a HYBRID to deliver mystical visions via her eyes.

Seed Sucker: Slang, a criminal who extracts HEAVEN SEED from HYBRIDS.

Skull-bit: A drill used to penetrate the back of a HYBRID’s skull to reach her HEAVEN SEED gland.

Tuaoi Stone: A magical crystal. Tuaoi Stones are found primarily in the Vindhya Mountains west of Godtown. They are vital in both YOGA and RUNETECH.

Varna: “Color.” The varnas are the four major caste groupings into which marjaras and humans traditionally fall: BRAHMIN, KSHATRIYA, VAISHYA, or SUDRA. The corresponding colors are white, red, yellow, and black, respectively.

Will Kill for Money, Part 4 (of 4)

From the Casefiles of the Ragamuffin

Featured image swiped from ENM.

FIRST | PREVIOUS

Hilscher, their host, quickly made his way to Lung and did namaste. Lung, without cracking so much as a smile, bowed in return. Both men were gigantic, though Hilscher was the more intimidating of the two, as Lung had put on fat in recent years.

Iron Lung was a notorious gangster who ruled the drug trade in most of Southside, especially the massive slum called Harijan Basti. He and Rags had tangled more than once—and it was a testament to his resourcefulness and power that she had always come off the worse in those encounters.

Rags slipped away from the ladies cooing over her and walked brashly up to the huge men. She didn’t bow, but merely placed her fists on her hips and gave the two of them a childish scowl.

Hilscher’s voice came through Nicky’s earpiece. “Ah, Fräulein Rags, you have met Herr Lung, I presume?”

“I have,” Rags said.

Now a small smile cracked Lung’s stony face. He bowed slightly. “Ragamuffin. I am … surprised … to see you here.”

Hilscher smirked.

So this was what he was after—sending a message to one of his greatest rivals in the drug trade. Word would get out quickly, if it hadn’t already, that Rags was in Hilscher’s pay.

“I’m afraid Fräulein Rags cannot talk for long,” Hilscher said. “She is working tonight, ja?”

“How unfortunate.” Lung reached into his jacket, and Rags tensed, but his hand came out holding a pack of cigarettes. He stuck one between his lips, and Hilscher offered him a light.

After a few puffs, Lung said, “The Ragamuffin and I have much to discuss—but it will have to wait for another time.”

Casually, Rags cracked her fine knuckles one by one. “Y’know I use riot rounds,” she said quietly, “cuz I got a rule for me an’ my guys: don’t kill nobody. That’s my rule. But I carry just one half-jacketed hollow-point. Got it with me all the time. An’ you know why?”

Lung took a deep pull on his cigarette and slowly blew out a thick stream of smoke, but didn’t answer.

“I got your name etched in that bullet, Iron Lung, an’ one o’ these days, I’m gonna use it.”

Lung leaned down until he was almost eye-level with Rags. His smile again broke through his stony face, like sunlight shining through a chink in a rock wall. “Oh, I’m sorry. It’s terribly rude of me to meet a child like this. Next time we see each other, Ragamuffin, I’ll bring some toys, hm? Sharp ones … but I’ll be the one playing, you understand?” Continue reading “Will Kill for Money, Part 4 (of 4)”