project shiva – Moe Lane

Spent most of the morning reviewing PROJECT SHIVA.

Reviewing, plus taking notes. And… oof. It’s gonna need a bunch of stuff done under the hood, starting with yanking the narrative engine and replacing it with the more superior one I should have used from the start. There are also pacing issues. I’ve noticed that NaNoWriMo is very good for getting you to work, but you can tell when somebody’s hit their daily wordcount.

Still, it’s not a bad framework for a book. The unspoken conceit amuses me. I just need some more parts than I though if I want to fix PROJECT SHIVA up properly, that’s all.

Back to regular creativity tomorrow, I think.

I need to get my daily word count back up to respectable levels. I’d like to get either TINSEL RAIN or PROJECT SHIVA (remember that project?) in manuscript shape by the end of September. I think I know what’s wrong with the latter, aside from it being the first really long manuscript I ever worked on and I was working by guess and by God.

Hell, if I get into some kind of shape I could, you know, submit it. Just to get the practice in, and all that. Besides, it’d be nice if somebody else did all the damn heavy lifting in publishing one of my books for once.

Hey, I put the first draft of PROJECT SHIVA up on Patreon.

PROJECT SHIVA was my first NaNoWriMo, and then I promptly put it in a box. But I am apparently doing my best to avoid working on TINSEL RAIN this week; so I got a powerful urge today to take the text, convert it to Scrivener, and put the PDF of the first draft up on Patreon, just for fun. It’s about half the size that it should be and needs a rewrite or three, but if you’re a Patron: enjoy!

If not…

Snippet #2 from ‘Project SHIVA.’

I put up a different snippet on my Patreon as part of my ‘sorry for missing yesterday’s deadline;’ but it occurred to me that people here might want a look, too. So here’s another one of the interludes (which means that it’s different than the one on the Patreon). Note: rough first draft. Not apologizing, just noting.

Snippet2 PS

Continue reading Snippet #2 from ‘Project SHIVA.’

Snippet: “Project SHIVA – Prologue.”

No, really, I’ve been thinking about this one lately.

Project SHIVA – prologue
St Louis, 2006

Even spies get old.

Jack Brinley felt that that was somewhat unfair, actually. When he was smack-dab in the middle of his career, Jack always assumed that it would all end somewhere godforsaken, in an abrupt fashion, and with nobody around to care afterwards. That was fine, though; because the corollary to that would be that at least he’d be going out at the top of his game. You didn’t want to fail at your job, but you don’t want to live long enough to stop getting to do it, either.

But that was what happened. Go out the door almost willingly in ‘96, spend the next ten years pretending to write your memoirs, wait for the clock to run out. Deflect questions about what you did, until you realize that saying nothing and smiling faintly was usually all that people wanted to know. Play grandpa — and wasn’t that an alarming, but ultimately welcome, late-life revelation to have? — and practice your cover as a ‘character.’ It actually wasn’t so bad. Compared to prison, a mental ward, or an unmarked grave in Delaware? It wasn’t bad at all. Continue reading Snippet: “Project SHIVA – Prologue.”

In Nomine Revisited: Project SHIVA.

Been thinking about this one lately.

Project SHIVA – Google Docs

Project SHIVA

This secret governmental group is a notable example of why Dominic allows Asmodeus to conduct Renegade hunts without real interference. Simply put, it’s a cult of genocidal nihilists — and the brainchild of two Renegade demons: one of Death, and one of Infernal Fire. And yes, that’s meant to be alarming.

Project SHIVA was, at the start, just another deniable black project started in the middle of the 1950s. Its purpose was macabre, but legitimate enough, in a horrid sort of way: as both the USA and USSR had begun stockpiling nuclear weapons, with the intent to use them if pushed to the brink, it would be advisable to work out how to use them best. After all, if one were forced to destroy the planet, the entire point of the exercise would be moot if said attempted destruction was incomplete. The project members were thus charged to analyze intelligence reports, geographical studies, statistical analyses — in short, look through all the data on Russia (and later, China), the better to find an optimal way to blow the two countries to Hell.

Unfortunately, this sort of job is fairly rough on the average person’s long-term sanity. Trying to find people who wouldn’t crack under the strain was difficult, but eventually the government was able to refine their selection procedure. Alas, they ended up looking for well-adjusted but callous entities, and they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams: one of their analysts turned out to be Gregory, Renegade Balseraph of Death.

Continue reading In Nomine Revisited: Project SHIVA.