Edi's Book Lighthouse: Stephen Zimmer visit the Lighthouse: Interview and Giveaway

Edi's Book Lighthouse: Stephen Zimmer visit the Lighthouse: Interview and Giveaway

http://uranianfiction.webs.com/

I've read and reviewed one of Stephen's novels. In truth he's also friendly and has a nice face.

How Writers Transcend the Ego

One of the greatest joys of writing is that it allows authors to be so much more than who any one really is. The very worst cases of spirit possession and split personalities ultimately have far fewer characters than many novels.

Most of those who have grown up at some point heard the dictum: "Imagine being in the other person's situation." Wow, do fiction authors ever do that, with a vengeance. Not only do novelists - and by proxy, the stories' readers, imagine someone else's situation, they orchestrate a phenomenal number of possible scenarios and learn about how certain characters behave given those situations.

Many authors do discover even as they write, making it a mysterious process even for those involved. Some characters turn out to be a bit different from how one might have expected. People are both predictable and unpredictable in their behavior. Sometimes this makes real life easier to handle. Many authors get readers so worked up that when its done, for the first few minutes back in reality readers feel the same relief we experience when we wake up from a nightmare and start babbling, "Thank God that wasn't true," and things like that. Other times, people feel like they have experienced "a guided meditation" without limits on posture and breathing that might leave even well trained Lamas awash with a sense of 'experience'. Journeys of the mind.

This blog post can be linked with http://miriamspia.wordpress.com/ for a more complete understanding. FYI: novel writing and being great fans of fiction are not a good match for Buddhism - because they say that if you thought it has happened...in which case: OMG! you would not believe what the novelists and story writers have done! Some of it, readers have done to.

New Day

Hello there. There is an old song by a band called Jethro Tull. In one of their songs there is the line, "It was a new day yesterday, but its an old day now."

Right now, this blog seems a bit like this.

I first began this blog hoping to find out who would like an SF series about mercenaries that stars a man in the full flushes of middle age" age 52, and a young woman who is 23 years old. They are not lovers, but become a team. In some ways she is 'above him' - she is the boss, but somehow he is her mentor, but on a very personal level. She is an officer; he is a Sergeant.

Now, I have noticed that some people have actually been reading the novel An Adventure in Indianapolis over at myebook.com and this is very exciting for me. If any of you readers come across this blog, please attach comments as I would love to hear from you.

I have some other ideas, but if anyone wants a sequel, I need to know as I aim to please.

Will the world ever meet Gezka FaucMerz?

The author's personal saga of what has happened with the first of the SF Gezka & Kiel novels is the story of a real life series of tribulations in the life of a woman in her early 20s; her work life, her life as a high performance undergraduate and her first intensely passionate romance that culminated in a marriage that painfully turned into a travesty of error until it ended despite her protestations. That was the late 1980s.

Somehow in all that, the novel managed to be honed into a decent 2nd draft, to have the normal 5 readers...but then, neither was committed to secure computer filings and there were only two complete manuscripts. One ended up on the reverse side of letters to a university professor of philosophy and the other ended up tucked away amongst the things of a helpful but very short term lover. That was the early 1990s.

The novel managed to get an agent and to be reconstructed up to about 30,000 words in 2008 only to be lost to the demon "make back up files" in a hardware accident that irreparably fried it.

On Gezka FaucMerz

Gezka FaucMerz is biological, but intentionally designed. LOL, this takes "breeding" issues to a whole new level. It may remind people of that movie that starred Harrison Ford and some good looking young women as "synthetic people" - what the heck was film called again? Was that Moonraker, or is that a different SF story?

Are there enough readers who would be interested in a powerful full grown virgin warrior as a main character? Comments welcomed. I'm thinking men and women won't have the same feelings about this, but I could be wrong; please tell me.

Kiel Bronson and Gail Murphy

Kiel Bronson actually gets a girlfriend. This is not unusual for him. He is not what some would call "a player" - he is a genuine fellow when it comes to love and passion.

He meets Gail Murphy after she has been hired to be one of The Children of Loki - a mercenary order. She is a pilot and an engineer, which is a powerful combination. She's also good looking which is a major bonus. Gail is a lot younger than Kiel.

Somehow they end up together. These two are pretty 'with it'. They communicate well and figure out that they have 2 simple choices. They can either do without, or suffer the occasional off duty one night stand or they can try romancing one another even though they are work colleagues because, well, since they are part of the same order they will see one another again. They opt for this emotionally pragmatic choice.

Cross pollination of fiction characters

What would happen if Gezka FaucMerz met Father O'Malley? The first is from the SF novel The Children of Loki also called In the Blink of an Alien Eye. The second is from An Adventure in Indianapolis. In truth, unless Father O'Malley had special protection or unless the FaucMerz did not meet the priest until years after she met Kiel Bronson she would slaughter the priest - literally: the only other exception would be if God personally intervened with more power than an older brother between siblings.

O'Malley's soul is probably in better shape than Gezka's but its not really her fault. She was conditioned to be a fighter in every way and on every level. Her big thing is really that when she went AWOL from Emperor Rejkyavik's "space navy" she seized what little free will there might be in her otherwise thoroughly arranged life. Gezka's human makers planned to give her only slightly more free will than you expect your washing machine to have - only sentient.

Art Dies at the Hands of Business?

I often wondered whether or not I would have any hope of surviving if I met Gezka FaucMerz in person. That's a strange feeling as a writer...but in retrospect, mothers experience it often enough: to spawn someone who proves to be more powerful - at least at some points and in certain ways. Still, there is an aura of Frankenstein about it.

For some reason I am almost able to visualize this...its kind of nice imagery. There is a bookish brunette human and then this sort of comic character style super charged woman warrior: all military perfection but has never had a boyfriend in her life. Some virgin goddess of war...I guess in that sense reminiscent of Athena but in other ways...dear readers [if you are there] this is no Athena.

When I crafted her lovingly to thrash music while not talking to my boyfriend who was right there with me but wanted to be alone much of the time I had not realized that she might be well suited for video games.

Wha? Did we just change the channel?

Kiel Bronson and Gezka FaucMerz are still seeking a home by their creatrix getting a publishing contract for novels in which they star.

Mysteriously - this child must have a different mother or father: there is another novel called An Adventure in Indianapolis created in 2006. It is about the extraordinary assistance the city's youngest ever Mayor secures, and how they unravel a plot by local drug manufacturer's and dealers.

The band of heroes is a party of 4, including 1 fighter (male), 1 thief (female), 1 cleric (1 male) & 1 attorney (did you expect that?).

The villains include: 1 manager (male), 1 women's boutique clerk (female), a group of less well specified individuals of various colors (mostly male), and a Madame (yes, that kind of Madame)

What is Uranian Fiction?

This name came to me; it was inspired, almost as if from a dream. My worst fear of course, is that it will amount to nothing. It was just a passing thought I had. It was something that I had hoped would lead to the realization of great goals.

Uranian Fiction is supposed to mean that you get fantastic stories. Experimental, SF, fantasy...but that sometimes, the fiction you get is exceptional.

Readers are supposed to be fascinated and entertained. The Uranian Fiction is meant to be thought provoking and extraordinary...anything but run of the mill.

Is anyone out there?

Are there readers? If you want this blog, I am more than happy to continue to do it. However, if you don't, I have a choice: I either need to find people who do or stop wasting my time.

If you have the option, read about Gezka FaucMerz, but as her creatrix I would be afraid to actually meet her in person because she is so dangerous. Kiel Bronson is also delightful to read about but he's only sort of 'okay' in person as he is only good from the perspective of a rough and sometimes illegal and unjust world. If you are a true lady or gentleman, you are not going to want this one at all.

Why the Virgin Warrior?

Gezka FaucMerz is a virgin warrior mainly because the breeding program for Rejkyavik's soldiers is tightly controlled. The culture does not leave time or space for such things, as much due to the brainwashing as anything else. The FaucMerz was raised to know that when the geneticists have determined that the time is right, she would be sent papers telling her who she was going to mate with.

Introduction to 31st Century corporate warfare

SF fans everywhere know the future, though sometimes brighter may also be bleak. In the 31st century, "small government" has included reform bills to make it so that economic competition does not consume the resources of the government. One major change put into place is that businesses are allowed competitive rights that include "bald face" warfare. It is only due to this public policy that Kiel Bronson sees a niche for them as mercenaries. Gezka is naive on this point.

The Children of Loki series waxes philosophical

Gezka FaucMerz and Kiel Bronson are meant to co-star in a series of SF novels. I sometimes wonder about how this means they exist. I mean, obviously they are only imaginary characters and yet I have always felt as if they will more reality if I get them published in a novel series than they have now.

Have you heard stoeis about 'unborn children in the spirit world, looking for their parents'? I have. Sometimes I think novels are like that.

I first 'created' Gezka and soon thereafter Kiel when I was 19 - Gezka was older; she's 23 at the beginning of the first novel. Kiel is a lot older; he's 52 at the beginning of the first novel. Not until I was well over 30 years old myself did I even see that the age difference between Kiel and Gezka is the same as the age difference between my father and I in real life.

The Future of Engineering

The Future of Engineering
By Miriam Pia
1995 / 2010


Disruption struck the engineering laboratory of an English university. Computer screens crackled and went dark. Testers and timers scratched; fuses burst in those bundles of electronic parts. Graduate students gasped and cursed. Students looked away from their projects to their comrades. “Did you just lose power?” they asked each other.

Office doors swung wide. The advanced students and those with the prestige of office space squinted up to the glowing neon lights and cursed in a variety of languages. None of them were British.

“It’s the storm,” suggested an undergraduate working on her final project.

A German man glowered. “Storm? There is no storm.”

“Have you been outside recently?” the young woman replied. “Have you even been near a window leading to the outside world?”

The young German man with the office without windows frowned. “No, I haven’t.”

“Me neither,” the young woman shrugged. “Just seems probable that a storm would have caused it.”

The German shook his head briefly, confused. Before he mustered a response several professors burst into the laboratory with flapping ties. “Who did it?!” one of them shouted.

“Obviously wasn’t you,” the middle aged mustached man said to the German. His thinking was simple: Germans never do anything wrong. They work hard; they’re perfectly well behaved and he had recruited them all himself - innocence guaranteed.

The group of them gazed around the room. An old, recently divorced for his third time, overweight professor suddenly declared, “It’s that Czech woman! Where is she?” He felt a huge sense of validation at finding out that there was a woman at the source of the problem.

“She’s not in,” said her Australian aboriginal office mate. “I haven’t seen her since half eleven.”

One of the electrical engineers that vaguely recalled how he’d unsuccessfully tried to chat her up the previous weekend spoke up. “She’s been seen with strange people lately,” he began, his mind thick with the latest conspiracy theories. “I’ve seen her with two physicists, a robotics man and one of those philosophy people.”

“Well,” said one of the other supervisors as he patted his tie back into place, “who else is missing?”

“The Austrian!” declared the German.

“Not in my laboratories, not at this university,” the most tenured professor shrieked nervously. Since the turn of the 23rd century there had been what he felt to be an insane devotion to wildly unlikely experimentation in the department. The EU, pushed along by what the North Americans kept calling ‘the New Enlightenment’, had succumbed to a massive influx of investment from private sources. No one understood it, as far as he was concerned.

The Age of Fossil Fuels was over. Lunar and Martian colonization were booming. The global and extra-global economies were very changed. The young were euphoric with optimism. Options for travel and adventure grew like wildfire - on and off world. Interplanetary transport and growth were political mandates. The Futurists had gone green and the Greens had gone Futurist. This political and cultural combination made it an era of playful creation and exuberance.

Two of the doctoral students ran off to check the main circuitry. Three of the other students furrowed their brows and decided to pore over the computers, thoroughly covering every nook and cranny in search of the problem’s cause.

The professors continued to snarl, wince and bicker. They were rather overworked and tended to be combative, always on the look out for how someone else’s students were mucking up the entire department. Unbeknownst to most of the students, they were having union problems and were under severe pressures from the administration to radically alter the syllabi for courses in all manner of engineering sciences. The university was also facing waves of interdisciplinary interests from potential students, which was complicating the amazing supply of financial backing from private industry. This made their lives very difficult and the strain showed.

“It’s that blasted ‘Philosophy of Discovery’ module!” one of the professors complained. It was part of a course that criticized, reviewed and proposed alternative methodologies in research. “Do you know, I’ve actually received an application from a terrifyingly well funded M.Sc. In Philosophy - of all the bloody subjects, to do some psychopathic experiment in telepathic navigational systems for the lunar shuttle?!”

“Good God,” retorted another fellow, “who could possibly supervise such a thing?”

“That’s just it,” the man continued, “the application came with an ominous letter from Boeing, offering $350,000 to pay to find and retain both a supervisor and external examiner if necessary. The student suggested a former CIA agent from a section of that Agency which is only rumored to exist!”

“You think that’s bad,” another, younger professor of engineering said. “I got an application from someone currently at MIT who is absolutely desperate to follow a traditional British program - except that she needs enough laboratory space to work with fission due to some little projects the ESA has her on. Worse still, she sent some form that apparently says that a uranium license can be obtained. I don’t know about the rest of you, but do you know what will happen to my insurance rates if I have to tell my physician that I work with 7 kg of uranium?”

“This cannot happen,” the eldest of them said. “It is not possible. Do you understand; such a thing is not possible. It will not occur - not at this university.” His blood pressure had risen dramatically over the preceding 2 years. His problem was that impossible things happened in his university with increasing frequency.

Meanwhile, in the student bar, the Czech woman sat with her office mate, who had found her after leaving the lab and the frustrated supervisors. “You want to what?” he asked. Although he did not tend towards either paranoia or conspiracy, he was quite skeptical.

“Amplify your mind and get a few readings, “ she told him through her accent. “It shouldn’t be difficult and certainly not painful.”

He thought it sounded like the worst chat up line in history. He couldn’t understand why she might not say so, even if she wanted him. It was the 23rd century after all. “Why,” he said flatly.

“I just need to run some tests,” she answered, oblivious to his imaginings of a come-on line. It wasn’t that she found him ugly, but she had more interesting things on her mind. “I know it sounds stupid, but it just might be that annoying little variable which is messing up my equipment. If not, I won’t have wasted much time, and if so - well, then I’ll have to discuss a change in materials with my supervisor.”

She was drinking half a pint of stout. The two of them had been sharing an office for several weeks. Before he showed up, her equipment ran perfectly. Since his arrival one peculiar little bug had repetitiously shown up in her systems. She had tried correcting her software and all the other ordinary solutions already. She had concluded that the problem was simply - him.

There was a strange humming sound, a scuffling noise and a loud cry of triumph from just behind the door of an electron microscopy lab. The two office mates rose and went to look. The lab was directly across the hall from the on campus pub. From the mechanical laboratory down the hall, the other group rushed to the scene of the ruckus. Splayed out on his front side, lab coat opening out beside and behind him like a pair of angel wings was the German doctoral student. “Caught the little bastard,” he growled, trying to decide whether or not to squeeze it to death. It was in fact, a mouse.

“Kind of an old fashioned solution to this particular problem,” noticed the young researchers.
“Yes,” said the oldest professor. “Let us keep this in mind - not to let our imaginations get the better of us in the future.”

The German’s recruiter grinned with relief. “Well done!” he proclaimed, jostling his tie.
The young woman who had suggested a storm might be the cause brought a rubbish bin and helped to escort the student and the rodent out of the building. Of course she knew better than to kill it. They both did.

The young German was literally blinded by the natural daylight.

The Children of Loki - Gezka's Shades

Yesterday the fellow SF author Mike Williamson commented on a photo of him in sunglasses at his public or semi-public website. This reminded me of the importance of sun protection. Gezka FaucMerz also needs protection from 'solar radiation'. She also has sunglasses in the first novel. They are not ordinary eye wear since they are designed to be able to be used during heavy hand to hand combat. Well, actually they use weapons but are trained for in-close fighting as well as being able to pick off opponents from a distance. Although her main firearm has been named: the Zeitchgnaster FNL quadromatic rifle; her sunglasses have not been named.

Doing Business as a Creative Professional

Doing Business as a Creative Professional

Military Science Fiction

http://io9.com/5481380/your-military-science-fiction-isnt-really-military-science-fiction

A Note to Readers

Thank you so much, and welcome to the blog. Feel free to share about it, whether amongst your family and friends at the beach or online through a "Facebook Like" method. I really appreciate you. The number one thing that every writer and creative story teller needs are their readers. Without people like you, writing a novel is a lot like a private day dream. In truth, even though I do want to earn a good living writing, I always wanted to make people happy with high quality tales.

There is a place for stories in the real world, as you are well aware. Thanks again, be sure to invite your other friends to join us. Let me know what you think as we go along. Your comments are welcome, whether it is one remark once, or if you enter into a long dialogue with me about a blog posting.

Inconjunction & Steel Hale

Steel Hale is one of the mercenaries that Kiel and Gezka hire in The Children of Loki. He is very special in that he is one of the very few Exterior citizens that they are able to include. He has been genetically engineered for his profession as a demolitions expert. Kiel persuades Gezka to hire him even though he is a civilian using the argument that compared to her, everyone is a civilian, even most military personnel. This is true, since she believes that only genetically engineered soldiers are "real ones". In the Exterior Federation - the norm is to have engineered military forces. To Interior Federation personnel this is offensive; genetic engineering of humans is viewed as an evil of the Exteriors. The way the cultures "fate" people based upon their engineering is frowned upon.

Steel Hale is a happy Exterior. He knows he is incredibly fortunate to be able to have so much to do with one of Emperor Rejkyavik's soldiers - one of the Captains. He is content to have little to do with Captain FaucMerz since back home, he would only ever see her if she were in a parade of military personnel. They have a natural and unspoken sense of cultural unity.