Category Archives: A Collection of Shards

Progress updates on my futuristika novel, A Collection of Shards.

Writing on a Train

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I neglected to post a blog entry today in the morning.  I felt too tired and uninspired to write anything of substance.  Also I could not relax until I knew I had left Toronto.

Now it is evening.  And I’m on a train, again going the farthest east on land I’ve been in Canada.  I’m going to Montreal again.  Slowly the English Breakfast tea is starting to kick in.  The air feels heavy and tired.  And I can write in peace.

It is amazing how quiet the train is.  Most of  the time I only hear the clatter of metal wheels on metal rail.  The swaying of the car is both comforting and awakening.  In Europe the trains don’t sway as much.  I guess the sway is one of the beauties of the Canadian track.  Everyone else used concrete ties and high-tech rails.  Not us Canadians, good old turn of the century-the 19th century that age of steam, iron and men driving nails with sledgehammers-wooden ties with metal piles.  But this doesn’t bother train, as I hurtle towards my destination.

Now the inspiration comes, slowly.  I will begin on my craft now.  So will be born my book, on board a Canadian VIA train bound for Montreal.

A Week into the Year, and Back to Writing

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A non-calendar week (7 days) passed already for this year. And I can say that I’m about 1/52 or less than 2% in completing this year’s goals. One goals is to finish writing and publishing my first science fiction novel, Echoes in the Endless. Thanks to my good friend Domenic’s suggestions I am reworking the first chapter again.

I decided to use a more conventional, simpler narrative. I dropped the techno-lingo and I will try using 21st century terminology normal people can understand. Normal as in non-military scifi geeks. 🙂 Overall I have a cleaner plot, and nicer story in mind. And I will avoid sinking the reader with too much background at once.

Anyways, the goal is to edit at least the first chapter this week. Then I plan on reworking in an earlier version of chapter 2.

Echoes in the Endless (A Preview)

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Today brought many disappointments to light. Some trivial, others complicated in their machinations. Then I remembered my todo list for this year. And since a few of you asked me personally about what I’m writing. So I present to you an excerpt of chapter 1 of Echoes in the Endless.

Note that this is an early revision of the book. The end product may be radically different. Enjoy.

Echoes in the Void
By: Dorian Antoni Puła
Chapter 01

Two Ligian Jaguar interceptors tore out of the Magnus Prime Ice Cloud that marked the end of the Gamma Trannes star system. The milky white ice cloud also marked the edge of Allegiance space. Captain Ewa “Hunter” Kruk sighed as her interceptor cleared the last of the ice cloud.

“No immediate threats detected.”, Ewa said. She watched as the sensor mast’s data floated ghostly in front of her forward cockpit monitor.

“Negative on Allegiance presence.”, her wingman repeated. Ewa looked to her right and sighted her wingman’s interceptor. The monitor overlaid a green triangle around the flat triangular hull of her wingman’s spacecraft. The interceptor’s camouflage skin softly faded from a light grey speckled with blobs of white into a uniformly dark grey. Powdery ice dust swirled off the interceptor’s forward swept wings and the high gain transmitter mounted to the belly of the interceptor. The transmitter encrypted and relayed the information to the Sentinel carrier group still hiding inside the ice cloud.

“Acknowledged Alpha Flight. Proceed with sector sweep.”, the deep voice of Admiral Jeremy Nelson boomed in her ears.

Ewa looked down at the floor of her cockpit. The cockpit’s bottom monitor displayed a large hexagonal sensor array hugging the belly of her own Jaguar. Thin long pale graceful ice dust trails streamed off the sensor’s edges. The monitor drew a orange outline around the sensor. Cleaning sensor array – 60%. The message written in large orange font flashed across the sensor. The surface of the sensor pulsated as its membrane tried to throw off the sticky dust. Cleaning sensor array – 63%.

“Permission to clear buffer zone. Particle interference with array.”, Ewa said.

“Granted. Proceed with caution.”

The admiral’s words sent a shiver down Ewa’s spine. Without the standard set of capital ship buster and anti-spacecraft missiles on either her or her wingman’s interceptor, she felt vulnerable. A Jaguar interceptor could outrun and outmaneuver any Allegiance interceptor. But if the Allegiance placed a beacon drone close to their position, it would sense their presence and sent out an alert to the nearest Allegiance fleet. Neither the carrier nor the accompanying Hibernian lance frigate would have time to escape. Ewa breathed deeply and eased her fighter out of the cloud.

To be continued…

All rights reserved. Copyright Dorian Pula.

Update: 200th post too! w00t!

Micro-Blogging

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So far I’ve had some success at blogging at daily intervals. As you may have noticed that the brievity of my recent blogs. First, the device I blog from now doesn’t let my type as fast as a regular keyboard. Second I am concentrating on the science fiction novel I’m writing now. Just finished the rough draft of chapter 3.

A New Hope

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2

Ok, I just had to take that title. While I’m not a huge Star Wars fan, light sabers and X-wing fighters are cool. So why the title? And why the enthusiasm?

First, I have a job! Thats right, I now work as a software consultant for VisionMAX Solutions. I get to build neat web applications in Java for clients. Its not exactly open source, but the mode of work is very similar. I am pretty excited about the job. I just need to get used to the new schedule.

Second, I started writing again! Yup, I am working on a science fiction novel. First chapter done in rough, and the second chapter progressing well. Lets see if I can keep it up to finish the novel.

Lastly, Ubuntu 8.04 came out recently. I have been running the KDE 4 desktop on it, and its fairly stable. Recently I’ve had some issues with the performance KDE 4. So its back to KDE 3, which is still rock solid. I might get into KDE 4 development and help progress KDE 4 towards the same stability as KDE 3.

Digging Out of Self-Made Holes

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Right before the end of last year, I made a number of “blue sky” goals for 2008. Unfortunately I fell into a number of self-made holes from last year, that basically prevented me from moving forward. To make things worse, I realized no single “thing” would resolve or complete even part of one of those goals.

So after wishing, raging, and begging the these issues to go away, all thats left is a lot of legwork. Not too happy, but I resign myself to digging away these holes myself. Still open to a magic wand waving away everything, though. 🙂

In the open source programming part, I finally threw out a good chunk of code, restarted and refactored most of the game engine for justCheckers. I need to reimplement moving and jumping pieces in a sane way still. Then after I fix the user interface and do some testing. Only then I can package version 0.1.1 out the door, and show the world some real progress.

As for writing, I cut back on one of my novel ideas. I am concentrating on writing a dark, hard scifi novel called Echoes in the Endless. So far I have the rough draft of half of the first chapter written. Lots to do still.

Job searching is just plain tedious. And no I have not gotten a single reply, so stop asking. Its just not fun to even think about it. Everything else is pretty much on hold until I get a revenue stream… like a job.

Being is in Mechanical Harmonic is Not Fun

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I think I can say that this is the last remnants of my malady. I can say this by the increase of sinus induced headaches and the symptoms of hay-fever. Also my throat no hurts… and so forth. Yesterday was OK too… except in the morning where I felt not too hot. Oh, and it was Mother’s birthday. Oops… I forgot everything about it. Anyways after a bit of coaxing I went with them to Awenda Provincial Park. Which was enjoyable as it was mostly me loafing around on a beach doing mostly nothing except writing. Then we went kayaking on nearby Kettle Lake. The sensation of gliding silently across the still water, gazing at the strange forest of dried pine mingled with water lilies, and grasses… serene. No unusual wildlife was seen but that is alright too.

When it comes to writing, I began to jot down notes about the different characters, factions, and plot of my story. I decided upon the title to be: Echoes in the Ether. I changed the beginning a bit, and made the background history interwoven in the conversations and thoughts of the characters. While I did notice a fair bit of influence from Battlestar Galactica (especially with the robotic Daedus faction), and the Homeworld games, I still think my idea as a whole is fairly unique. I am also glad that in the process of creating my universe I managed to get rid of the whole “Pregenitor” race idea, and still kept the Maker in the story. I hope that I can get the right mix of high tech science fiction and mystical religion as a backdrop for the story. I don’t want to turn into a fantasy story by adding too much crazy magic and mysticism. Overall I have most of the backdrop finished, I just have to finish notes on the last two factions. Then I have to jot down the back story, some technological details, and bit of landscape details. After that its just main character descriptions and plot.

On the programming front, I didn’t get much done except removing CHARVA and CLI elements out of the justCheckers code. The old style stream messages are still there. Maybe I can make a user interface from that. As for school preparations, a big fat zero. Oh well…