alexanderwales posts
Posts: 495
Files: 107
Thresholder, ch 183, What Remains
Normal LinkEdit/Comment Link~~~~Richter had been a fan of cryonics, and talked about it often. She had plenty of money, and had set herself up to be frozen after she died, under the theory that perhaps she would be able to be revived after death.“I want to live forever,” Richter had said. “I don’t really understand the people who don’t. They say, ‘oh, but you’ll get so bored’ and I think to myself, ‘no, what are you talking abou...
Thresholder, ch 182, We Have a YouTube Channel
Normal LinkEdit/Comment Link~~~~Perry had always known that politics was an absolute fucking nightmare, but he hadn’t realized how bad it was on the inside until he started working through a plan to present the Farfinder and its diplomatic mission to the world without offending anyone. No matter what Perry could think of to say, he knew he’d sound like a crank. What he needed was clear proof that they had access to multiversal travel, but in ...
Thresholder, ch 181, Home Movies
Normal LinkEdit/Comment Link~~~~Perry was passing through Spokane when he decided that he was going home after all. There was no particular impetus for it, except that they’d taken family trips out to Spokane a few times to see relatives. Maybe it was something about being in his home state, though eastern and western Washington were different places. Maybe some bit of nostalgia had been kicked loose.He had checked ahead and seen that his paren...
Thresholder, ch 180, Back to the Future
Normal LinkEdit/Comment LinkI'm really trying to get Thresholder finished while not rushing what the narrative demands. Because the schedule is shot to hell, the chapters will be coming out whenever I'm done with them, rather than on any set schedule. Thank you for your patience.~~~~Hella had a head wound, and though it had been a bleeder, she was up and walking around.“I’m not sure that we wanted the portal now,” she said. “We ha...
Thresholder, ch 179, Quarry
Normal LinkEdit/Comment LinkWe're getting there.~~~~Perry was braced near the exit hatch for the whole last part of the trip as Dirk guided them down into the crevasse next to the quarry. They’d swung around and approached from the opposite direction of the railway, low to the ground, the better to hide from where Queenie had been last time. The ship was moving about as fast as it could without breaking apart, and it was clear that Dirk had...
Thresholder, ch 178, Visions
Normal LinkEdit/Comment Link~~~~With Grayspear dead, Anaksi wasn’t needed inside the shelf space. She was welcomed aboard the Farfinder, assigned a bunk, and given fresh clothes and a hot shower, something she’d never had before — something that the Farfinder only had in short supply, actually, because there was a large tank of water that they didn’t want to refill from local sources if they could help it.Perry had given her a half-hearte...
Thresholder, ch 177, Conflict
Normal LinkEdit/Comment LinkThis is not how one wants to read/write a web serial, I'm aware of that. (Agares should be publishing its next batch soon, I regret introducing submarines, and I am aware that this is a stupid reason to stall on writing.)~~~~Perry felt a wave of relief when he realized that they weren’t fighting each other.Hella had gone glowing and was fighting in full superhero mode, and the Walkers were firing their guns, but ...
AGARES, Release 6
Normal LinkEdit/Comment LinkMy plan is to finish up the arc (almost certainly next release) and then do some edits, particularly some continuity stuff. I've been slightly distracted in the past week with some microfiction stuff, most of which can be read here. I'm also trying not to frame it as "I am working on stuff that I like but need to get back to The Real Work" which I don't think is productive for me.
AGARES, Release 5
We're back! Slight delay on this one that was caused by me reading through (and working on) The Timewise Tales, a novel I wrote and never finished back in 2011. I'm planning to put a few more words into that to try to get it ready for a Patreon-only release: it's early, flawed, but readable, and the main character arcs are basically done, it just needs to capstone, plus a little not-too-serious massaging.Anyway, this is AGARES, ch 35-...
Thresholder, ch 176, Culture Clash
Normal LinkEdit/Comment LinkMy aim is for a new chapter of Thresholder at least once a week, ideally on Mondays (today is Tuesday).~~~~Perry came out of the Farfinder to find them nearly at the point of standoff. Guns had not been drawn, but it was clearly a close thing, and more than one hand was touching a grip.“It’s not like that, you imbecile,” said Dirk Gibbons. “There are a million worlds out there, and they’re all different from ...
AGARES, Release 4
Finally back home. The smart thing to do would be to space out the releases a bit to prepare for any potential times of famine, but nah, not going to do that, really trying to reduce the amount that this project in particular feels like doing work (which currently is ... mostly none?).This is ch 30-34, ~15K words.Normal Link (edit/comment link)
AGARES, Release 3
Just got done with a family reunion at a cabin in the woods with no wifi and just my crappy little laptop, now at a different relative's house for a visit, but with an actual desk. I have a rule that I shouldn't post things while traveling unless they're cued and ready to go, but what is AGARES if not breaking rules?I'm going to try to break these into manageable chunks for posting purposes. Right now, the master copy of AGARES is...
AGARES, Release 2
I've been thinking a little bit about how these releases are going to look, and have decided that each is going to be their own doc, even though I'm writing this all in One Big Doc. Hopefully that works for you. I'll also be doing an epub, which is just a quick and dirty "save as epub" that hopefully GDocs has a good implementation of. Plausibly there will be "the whole thing" checkpoints, I don't know about that, ...
Avant-Garde Autopilot Rotogravure Express: System-Go!
I shared in the update five days ago that I was working on an idea that had taken me, that of a litRPG that's written from the point of view of the System. It has a long name now, which is never to be referenced: just call it Agares or AGARES if you must (the "Go!" is a directive, like you're throwing a Poké Ball).I wasn't sure whether I was going to write more of it, but I wrote another 32K words in the last five days.And yo...
Thresholder, Book 3: Esperide
The third book of Thresholder is now out on Amazon in ebook, KU, and audiobook species. Audiobook will follow at some later date. Editing on this was largely copy-editing, with not many changes to the overall flow and content, in part because I was quite happy with this how this book turned out.As always, any reviews are highly appreciated.~~~~Perry came through the portal on a space station that was falling apart and dosing him with radiation, a...
Update
INT. Therapist’s Office. THRESHOLDER sits on one end of the couch, while ALEXANDER sits on the other. The therapist, JESSICA, sits across from them with a notebook and a pen.JESSICA: Alright, we said that we would take a little time. How has it been?ALEXANDER: If I’m being honest, it’s been one of the most productive two months of my life.THRESHOLDER: (rolling eyes) Right.JESSICA: But you haven’t been working on Thresholder, is that right...
Thresholder, ch 175, Repairs
Normal LinkEdit/Comment LinkIt's been a while, sorry. I was in Berkeley for LessOnline/Manifest, and got a lot of work done on things that weren't Thresholder, maybe because I was just in a different place and taken away by different ideas. If this is a thing next year, and I go, I think it'd be best to just declare the whole time a "no writing" time, and whatever gets written then will be between me and my computer, and if it...
Thresholder: The Great Arc, now in ebook!
The second book of Thresholder, the Great Arc, is now available on Amazon as ebook, paperback, and on Kindle Unlimited!If you've been holding off on reading it, Thresholder is divided up into different worlds, and this is the second major arc, following Perry as he visits a xianxia ringworld. It's got martial arts, fan-favorite Maya Singh, some of the best "worlds of" chapters I've done, and I think is overall the book that I&...
Thresholder, ch 174, Rescue from Without
Normal LinkEdit/Comment Link~~~~Perry flew out from the city. He had the jar with the piece of yarn, and held it away from his body, but the link to Queenie was silent. His mental defenses were up, second sphere shielding him, his senses along the border sharpened to detect anything incoming. He didn’t like giving Queenie time to plan and plot, but he didn’t actually know where she was or what she was doing, so it wasn’t as though he could ...
Thresholder, ch 173, The Eight Worlds of Queenie, pt 2
Normal LinkEdit/Comment Link~~~~I got spat out with the rifle and worried that it would be taken from me straight away, but I was in a forest with big old trees, not in a back alley. And of course that got me worried that I’d have to hunt for my food again — I’d gotten used to street vendors and delivery drones, hot noodle soup in my hands five seconds after I’d had the thought that I wanted some.I found a trail readily enough, dirt path ...
Thresholder, ch 172, The Eight Worlds of Queenie, pt 1
Normal LinkEdit/Comment LinkTurns out that I'm still sick. No idea what the body is doing right now, but I had a fever last night for some stupid reason and my joints were all aching. My guess is that I might have parlayed influenza into a respiratory infection.I've been sort of idly working on some other projects too, which is maybe not helping Thresholder have regular chapter releases, though I don't know, I also think I'm mostl...
Thresholder, ch 171, Trades
Normal LinkEdit/Comment LinkI'm still recovering from being sick, back to about 90% capacity by my best estimation. My best guess is still that it was influenza, so I'm drinking lots of water and sleeping ten to twelve hours a day. I did have a moment driving my car yesterday when I realized that I didn't have the mental capacity to be doing that, not in the sense that I was going to cause an accident, but in the sense that I would no...
Out Sick
I was feeling a little bit sick when I posted the last chapter a week ago, and had joked with my wife that it was one of the weakest colds that I'd ever had ... and then I just kept getting worse. I'm fairly sure now that it was influenza, our whole house had it, and my son ended up with dual ear infections. I'm on the mend now, at maybe 70% capacity.I have a policy of not doing publishable writing when I'm sick, mostly because I ...
Thresholder, ch 170, The Great Awakening
Normal LinkEdit/Comment LinkAlright, I made this post twice, because my mouse has been double-clicking for whatever reason, and the "Next" button gets immediately replaced by the "Post" button if you double click insanely fast. The earlier version, which is now eaten, was just me complaining about stuff going on in my life, and apologizing for a lack of productivity, and really, was not worth reading. So congrats, you don't ne...
Thresholder, ch 169, On Practical Applications of Knowledge
Normal LinkEdit/Comment LinkSorry for the late chapter, I'm traveling and just didn't get as much editing time on the plane as I thought I would. (I've also been working on editing up the third book of Thresholder, trying to see what, if any changes would improve it, which is always an interesting experience, being in the guts of a middle section while still writing something far later in the chronology.)~~~~Perry didn’t particularl...
Thresholder, Book 1, now on Amazon
The first book of Thresholder is now available on Amazon, either through Kindle Unlimited, for regular ebook purchase, as a paperback, or as a full cast audiobook. As previously mentioned when I posted the ebook here for patrons, the newly revised first book has a lot of extra content, mostly to flesh out the early part of the story and be more of an "action flash forward" then "in media res".If you want to help me out, I would lo...
Thresholder, ch 168, Returned to Sender
Normal LinkEdit/Comment Link~~~~The first stop of the night was at the workshop, so Marchand could do a sonic scan of the device. This didn’t take terribly long, and Perry finally had an answer to what was happening internal to it, something that he’d only seen the edges of. There was the electrical aspect to it, which pulled from a person’s body and wasn’t actually electricity at all, and there was a lens, which pointed upward in a way t...
Thresholder, ch 167, Compromised
Normal LinkEdit/Comment Link~~~~Inside Perry’s hotel room, two women were failing the Bechdel test.“The front desk didn’t report him leaving,” said one of the two women. Her name was Dolores, no last name given when her partner referred to her. “So where’d he go?”“Front desk could be lazy, inattentive … covering for him,” said the other woman. She was Middler, which was probably a last name, but the only name that had been men...
Thresholder, ch 166, Midnight Rituals
Normal LinkEdit/Comment Link~~~~The moon was shattered across the sky. In places, you could see the remnants of a curve, but the whole thing had come apart, like a goblet pierced by a bullet. It was falling apart more, in slow motion, but even after fifteen minutes you could see where pieces of it had rotated at speeds that must have been supersonic given how big the whole thing probably was. It was stark white against the black sky, twinkling a ...
Thresholder, ch 165, The Cloven Soul
Normal LinkEdit/Comment LinkIf you haven't been following the Worth the Candle webcomic, it's up to episode 19 now.~~~~Perry slipped on the helmet. “Give me a reconstruction.”“Sir, as I’ve said, a physical reconstruction from audio alone is beyond me with the current restrictions on processing power,” said Marchand. “It is difficult even with multiple high-quality microphones pointed directly at the subject, but in this case w...
