Imaginary Stories

Diane Duane is a vegetarian.

This is a harmless example of the sort of gossip I heard years ago, when I was more involved in volunteering at conventions than I am now. Other non-harmless bits of gossip include: Author A is a mean drunk; Author B and Author C use conventions to hook up away from their respective spouses; Author D hasn't written in years, and all their recent works are ghostwritten; Author E is a dimwit who can't manage their own household accounts.

Neil Gaiman can't be trusted around young women.

This rumour was told to me with the same tone of authority as the rumour about Diane Duane. She had health problems, you see. So if she was ever a guest at a con where I happened to be working, I should make sure to mention to the organizers that she really needed a vegetarian option.

As it turns out, the rumour about Diane Duane is half true. She's written about her IBS at least on Tumblr, possibly in a few other places. Which is why I'm willing to share the rumour. I don't know if the person I got the rumour from years ago had heard it from someone else, or if someone in the chain of rumour-mongering heard part of a slightly different rumour and decided that Diane Duane should be a vegetarian for her own good. Maybe she ate a salad and complained about her stomach in front of the wrong person. It's a harmless example of the sort of gossip you hear when you're an insider, or useful to insiders.

The rumour about Neil Gaiman turned out to be true. By his own statements on the matter, it's true. Neil Gaiman can't be trusted around young women.

I heard the rumour after about five years of work. I'd joined a writing group, volunteered at a couple of local conventions, volunteered at a couple of larger cons, worked my way up from moving tables and chairs to coordinating which room got what audiovisual equipment when. I went from being an outsider to being someone who was invited to hang out with authors and agents at after-parties. And after five years of work, I got to be somebody who could be warned that Neil Gaiman needed to be kept away from young women.

And that you had to provide a vegetarian option for Diane. Poor girl. Sensitive digestion and all.

The rumour about Neil Gaiman turned out to be not harmless. But it was told to me in the exact same tone as Diane Duane is a vegetarian. I heard the rumour about Diane Duane once, and it never came up again. I heard the rumour about Neil Gaiman once, and it never came up again. I heard lots of rumours once.

I don't hear rumours anymore. I haven't volunteered for a convention in decades. I still attend a few, but they're for different blocs of fandom than I used to be in, and I don't see many of the same people at them. I'm sure there are creeps and abusers and predators at these conventions, but I'm not one of the special people who gets to protect myself from them. I'm not an insider anymore.

It took over twenty years for the rumour about Neil Gaiman to turn into a bomb exploding under multiple fandoms and franchises. I can't stop wondering about the next bomb that con organizers are trying to hide.

But at least the next Diane Duane will get their vegetarian option, thanks to the whisper network. If the right person hears the rumour at the right time.

This is a formula, a master plot, for any 6000 word pulp story. It has worked on adventure, detective, western and war-air. It tells exactly where to put everything. It shows definitely just what must happen in each successive thousand words.

No yarn of mine written to the formula has yet failed to sell.

The business of building stories seems not much different from the business of building anything else.

Here's how it starts:

1. A DIFFERENT MURDER METHOD FOR VILLAIN TO USE
2. A DIFFERENT THING FOR VILLAIN TO BE SEEKING
3. A DIFFERENT LOCALE
4. A MENACE WHICH IS TO HANG LIKE A CLOUD OVER HERO

One of these DIFFERENT things would be nice, two better, three swell. It may help if they are fully in mind before tackling the rest.

A solid thunk against the wall made Sato Saki jump and drop her hairbrush. She grabbed at the brush, nearly dropped the towel wrapped around her, and then her hands were confused between trying to catch the brush and the towel and she knocked the brush out of the air. It skittered on the bathroom tiles before ending behind the toilet.

"Ew," Saki grumbled. She grabbed some toilet paper and used it to gingerly pick up the brush and place it in the sink. She needed to wash that before using it again. Saki knew what her bandmates thought and it wasn't true, she wasn't a germaphobe, just careful.

So far Belgrave had been a bit of a bust. The schedule allowed them exactly enough time to fly in, set up and rehearse, take a couple of pictures, and then perform for the contest winners. Now she and the rest of BTK69 had enough time to eat, sleep, and fly to Taiwan for their next concert.

The money was good though, so none of them were going to complain. And Hal Harrower wasn't big in streaming, but he was big enough to be worth the band's time.

Before Saki could start washing the brush she heard a ragged knocking at her door. Probably Seo-yun again, wanting to complain about her upset stomach from eating too much airport food. Saki adjusted her towel as she stepped out into the hall. She unlocked the door and turned the lever and suddenly a massive weight on the door forced it open, and Saki barely stepped back in time to avoid being slammed by the door.

The weight was Hal Harrower, boneless and floppy. Saki drew a breath to scream but it caught short in her throat. Her billionaire host nearly collapsed to the floor, barely catching himself by falling against the wall instead. His bloodshot eyes swept past Saki, staring down the little hallway into the hotel room. Harrower shoved himself to a somewhat upright posture.

"Mr Harrower," Saki spoke with all the authority she could muster while she was wearing a towel and face to face with a man at least thirty centimetres taller than her. "You can't come in here."

He said something in - not English. Was that French? Did Hal Harrower think she spoke French? Harrower said something in French and then stumbled past Saki, swaying like a child on a bicycle.

Saki watched as an obscenely wealthy and even more obscenely drunk man wobbled into her room, dropped his coat on the floor, and then slowly fell forward until he hit her bed with a crash hard enough for her to feel it through the floor.

A long deep sigh escaped from Hal Harrower, and then his breathing settled into the slow rhythm of sleep.

"Huh," said Saki. She looked at Hal Harrower passed out on her bed, shrugged, and dumped her towel on the floor. Grabbing her phone from the charging station she muttered "No such thing as bad publicity."

JordanL: I appreciate the thought, I guess

JordanL: But if you want to help

JordanL: A) Ask first

JordanL: B) Send cash

416-27: This is more discreet than cash.

JordanL: Discreet?

416-27: Cash or money transfer looks like a payoff.

Yep. There it was. The part where he drove her crazy by saying something batshit crazy like it was the most normal thing in the world.

JordanL: And you think see-through silk lingerie

JordanL: Sent by a rich guy

JordanL: To a new grad with no visible means of support

JordanL: Doesn't look like a payoff?

"Ansetres plus aimes, explain how this man thinks he's sane?"

416-27: Other than my personal assistant, no one knows I sent you those gifts.

JordanL: Other than your personal assistant

JordanL: And the delivery driver

JordanL: And my building manager

JordanL: You signed the package

416-27: There's no reason for them to recognize my name.

JordanL: YOUR NAME IS ON THE BANK ACROSS THE STREET

416-27: My name isn't on signage for HTM Financial.

JordanL: "A DIVISION OF HARROWER TRUST MANAGEMENT"

JordanL: I CAN READ IT FROM HERE

416-27: We must have changed our branding. I'll check with the Chief Marketing Officer and find out when that happened.

JordanL: THAT IS NOT THE POINT YOU MANIAC

There was nothing official about Nova City's media district, just a cluster of news sites and traditional media with their offices on the boundary of Downtown and the Novasector tech hub. The centre of the district off Broadway held the headquarters of Nova City TopPod Newsgroup, 24Global, and RENN World, all on the same block. None of them were in the Big Five of news companies, and RENN World and TopPod Newsgroup were both owned by the same media group, but they were conveniently located and had decent reputations in the industry. Journalism student Laurel Jordan decided that was good enough.

She cut thrust about thirty metres above a plaza and let herself drop to the ground, landing next to a fountain shaped like a concrete boomerang. At just over 50 kilos and a velocity of 24 metres per second she didn't hit hard enough to crack the pavement. Laurel still absorbed the impact by flexing her legs a bit, to stay in habit.

She would have thought that dropping out of the empty sky would draw attention, but there were only three people in the plaza and they were all absorbed in their phones. None of the cars going by stopped either.

NEW YORK WORLD

November 6, 1862

GENOISE WINS

MISS CARAMEL GENOISE, KNOWN AS 'WITCH OF NEW YORK' AND 'MOUNT OF MANHATTAN', CLAIMS HISTORIC VICTORY

Will Represent New York's 4th District in 38th Congress

Defeats Dead Opponent By 13 Votes

"Ishi, bring her some tea and a bowl of barley."

Bowing awkwardly to Yoshi, Momori croaked out something almost like thank you. Her knees shook as Ishi went into the back of the shop.

"And bring a damp cloth!" Yoshi yelled towards the workroom door. Turning back to Momori he scowled again. "Let's get that stuff off your face. Is that charcoal?"

"Ran out of dye," Momori tried to shrug the matter off. "I just covered up the white spots in my eyebrows."

"You look like a kabuki actor," Yoshi replied. "With a drunk makeup artist."

"Go choke on a donkey cock."

"Is that any way to talk to your employer?"

"You're not my employer. I'm freelance."

"And with a mouth like that, you'll never be an employee."

A drone's camera caught her in mid-flight approaching King Tower, and the owner had sold the eight seconds of video to a news outlet. Now Laurel got to watch herself in flight, the first time she'd ever done so.

She looked ridiculous. Humans weren't built for flight, and rocketing through the air on beams of energy didn't look at all like the standard superheroic pose of flying flat. Instead she looked like a downhill skier leaning into a curve, cape flaring behind her as she balanced on twin beams of energy. At least the beams were impressive, all intense blue Cherenkov and bremsstrahlung radiations as the highly charged pions burnt through the air.

"For this they cancelled classes?" Laurel's normal speaking voice was down towards the deeper end of her contralto range, with just a bit of a burr.

She'd never expected to actually fight anyone. Or anything.

Segmented tentacles and grabbers slid around her, struggling to find a grip. A metal pincer closed tight over her cape and yanked hard, trying to drag Laurel out from under the robot's body. Ignoring it Laurel punched up into the robot, through its steel shell. Her fist hit something hard inside the saucer-shaped machine, something that buckled and lifted as her punch plowed through the robot's machine-guts.

Metal screamed as it ruptured. The robot stalled, underbelly tentacles dropping loose around Laurel.

Shoving the robot aside revealed the sky and another machine above her. A metal cylinder, bent and broken. Laurel braced herself, waiting for a new attack. After an instant of watching the complex cylinder she realized it wasn't a missile or drone. The robot's power turbine. Launched clean through the robot's body by the force of her blow.

Did I hit it too hard? Laurel wondered as she watched the turbine fly through the grey sky. The turbine, trailing smoke, arced up and over, tumbling as its rise turned into a fall.

Laurel realized its fall was taking it towards a nearby police car, parked lengthwise across the industrial road. The cops, watching from behind the car, realized the same thing and ran.

A bit too hard, maybe, Laurel decided. The turbine came down fast onto the hood of the police car, the hard smash almost inaudible over the sound of fire and safety alarms. Well, I'll know better for next time.