Author: OTS

My admin hat
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New Stuff

I’m starting new projects.

Taking lessons-learned from TiH, I’m starting two things.

The first is another kids book, aimed at a slightly older group than Mara. I’m angling for the same feel.

Initially I intended to write a direct sequel to Mara and the Trolls, but that story was done. The great conflict was resolved as best I could. I turned the crank on a few more iterations, follow-on stories and so forth, and they all felt like unnecessary sequels.

I did have such an awesome title though: Hector and the Fairy Godbear. Right?

Ah well.

The second is something more like TiH. A while ago I mentioned: “I learned I don’t like solo main characters. I like a bunch of the little buggers all pinballing off each other.

I do like keeping a setting for a few scenes. I want to introduce a room, a statue, a field of battle, or the places between stars, and be able to go back to that locale for another scene. I want to dive into the people doing the stuff, and if I reuse a room, the characters can start interacting again with less description.

I like magic. I like really, really complicated magic.”

And I think I’ve set that up this time. But I’m still learning. Hopefully.

Anyway, new stuff going on in the OTS-machine, and it’s going to be great.

Good luck, everyone. I’m rooting for you.

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Car Treasure

I want to find a BMW 6 series coup that’s new on the dealer lot.

BMW stopped selling them in the US in 2018-ish. I bet one exists somewhere.

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Motivations

Multiple conflicting motivations are better if they’re slightly askew. If Adam wants to win the tournament, and Bob wants to defeat Adam, Bob doesn’t necessarily have to win the tournament to do that.

Now one-on-one things reduce to simple conflict, but among a battle royale of eight participants, each of which are somewhat in opposition to the others, there’s a lot of flexibility.

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Contrapositive

Do you think Achilles would have been in the wrong if Odysseus, Pheonix, and Ajax hadn’t made their embassy? They did, so he was. He wasn’t really in the wrong before then, so it stands reasonable that he wouldn’t have been in the wrong if they’d never gone to carry Agamemnon’s apology.

But that also feels like a moment-in-time thing. Taking the Iliad for the time period that it was gives the morality that the story follows. Now, in these modern times with modern moralities, I’m not sure Achilles wasn’t wrong all along. Maybe his error didn’t come to the fore until the embassy, and for dramatic purposes it wasn’t visible. But perhaps he was still wrong to abstain from the combat.

I don’t know. That has a lot of laudable warfare in it, something I find questionable in a circumstance like the Achaeans’s. Wondering about questions like that strikes me as being similar to arguments about the Heisenberg Compensator from Star Trek.