Flash: The Back Room

Photo by Tomoe Steineck on Unsplash

The inn’s Back Room cracked windows released the some of the excessive heat created from the afternoon sun beating down on the building just mere hours ago, but soon the keeper or one of his sons would need to come into the well-appointed space and close them to keep the temperature necessary for sleeping against growing the late autumn chill as the sun dipped below the mountain range. In the meantime, a young nobleman paced while an older man sprawled on the settee, a book dangling between fingers to mark his place while he waited for Nigel to wind down.

“Have you made the decision to run?” Matthews asked. “I can have a ship ready for you before you make it back to Seaport.”

“I can’t do that, you know I can’t do that.” Nigel turned on the knotted wool rug to walk the other direction. “If I was going to do that, I wouldn’t have come this far. I would have run while in Kylar.”

“Then tomorrow morning we go through the pass.”

“Gods.” Nigel threw his head back in frustration, before executing another turn. “It’s so stupid. I thought I was safe.”

The old solider chuckled. “I know I taught you better than that.”

“There is no safety in war.”

“And?”

“The crown is either at war or preventing it, and therefore they are always in a state of war.” Nigel crossed the carpet again. “But Jackel has two children already. It should be one of them.”

“They are too young, considering.”

“Exactly.” Nigel ran both hands through his top-cut before throwing them out at his old mentor. “Thirty-two! ‘Considering.’ How is this even a consideration?”

“Treaties are made.” Matthews gave up waiting for the twenty-four-year-old to calm. Picking up his bookmark, he slid it between the pages and tucked the leather-bound treatise on horse breeding back into its velvet bag for storage with the other two books he had brought on this trip. “The merchant trade alone is worth a princely reward.”

The glare Nigel shot glanced off Matthews careless manner without effect. He hardened its steel and stared. Knocking on the door to the Back Room, startled him and drew both their eyes to the wooden barrier as it opened and the noise of the main room flooded in.

“My pardon, your Grace, your …,” the innkeeper coughed, cutting off his speech for a moment, as Nigel raised his eyebrows, “Sir.” He entered, a veiled lady traveler on his arm. “This good lady arrived seeking succor, and, as you know, with the harvest holiday, things are … hectic in the front rooms. May she share the Back with you?”

Rarely did anything trump Matthews station as Duke of Seaport. But a quick glance at the woman’s silk veil indicated crafting, if not necessarily nobility, the lacework being minimal around the eyes, then at least high merchant class, the delicate thinness of the fabric while retaining opaqueness was beyond the reach of all but the deepest purses, and as Nigel’s present dilemma revealed, accommodations needed to be made for those who ruled the trade routes. The duke stood, indicating with a hand sweep to the keep to install the woman the best seat of the room. She sunk, carefully arranging layers of green and teal skirts around her, heavy red clay clinging around the hems. She untucked the edges of her veil from the laces holding her bodice and blouse together so the bottom foot of fabric pooled in her lap.

Once settled, she turned her head toward the keep and nodded. “My Lords, it is my pleasure to make Mistress Zeriff’shazeriff known to you.” He stumbled over the foreign name. “Mistress, these are his Grace, my own Duke of Seaport,” Matthews ruled the land between the pass and the port and bowed acknowledgement of the introduction, the woman tilted her head slightly in return “and … Nigel, Knight of the Order of the Icey Pansy, Lord of … Ground-swell?” The keep looked toward the two noblemen for confirmation.

Matthews nodded, impressed the man had pulled one of Nigel’s lesser noble titles from the heated air, while his old squire grabbed his hat where he had thrown it hours ago and bowed excessively and said, “A pleasure.” The woman veil had puffed out when Nigel was introduced, but her head moved not at all after his obeisance.

“Your meal should be here shortly,” the plainfolk bowed to the men before turning to the woman and saying in a nervous rush, “and Mistress, I will have that foot bath ready for you straight away.”

The two soldiers shared a glance, Nigel giving a quick finger signal they used to exchange when he was squired to the duke to indicate troublesome officers with delusions of grandeur. The innkeeper hadn’t batted an eye having Matthews stay in the Climb’s Start for a week while the letter he sent ahead found Nigel and brought the young man back home from his most recent escapade, nor had he cared when Nigel finally arrived other than delivering the wanderer directly to his old mentor, yet this woman had already managed to get into the Back without a title and had the man rushing to meet her demands over the nobles. What kind of harridan was now ensconced with them for the evening and how soon could they extract themselves from the situation?

(words 899, first published 2/5/2025)

The Back Room series

  1. The Back Room (1/19/2025)
  2. The Back Room Part 2 (2/2/2025)
  3. The Back Room Part 3 (2/9/2025) – to be written

Geeking Science: Artemis Accords

Government provided logo for the Artemis Accords

The Artemis Project (returning mankind to the Moon by 2026 to develop a testing station for technology to use when visiting other planets, a research station for learning about our Moon, and port for jumping off to explore Mars) has created the opportunity for the Artemis Accords. Over forty countries have signed the Accords, that is a fifth of Earth’s nations. (Note that the biggest “competitors” to the USA in space, China and Russia, have not joined.) 

This is something to Geek About!!!

“The accords establish a practical set of principles to guide space exploration cooperation among nations. … The Artemis Accords reinforce and implement key obligations in the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. They also strengthen the commitment by the United States and signatory nations to the Registration Convention, the Rescue and Return Agreement, as well as best practices NASA and its partners support, including the public release of scientific data. More countries are expected to sign the accords in the months and years ahead, which are advancing safe, peaceful, and prosperous activities in space.” (Bardan)

That said, the Artemis Accords are very USA centered in the interpretation of how space law should work, including the commercial activities such as mining. Both Russia and China object to that base. (Wikipedia)

The key principals in the Accords is as follows (from Lea):

  1. Peaceful Exploration of space
  2. Transparency / public release of scientific information
  3. Emergency Assistance
  4. Registration of Space Objects
  5. Preserving Heritage – Preserving robot or human landing sites of historical significance
  6. Space Resources – Extracting and using resources from celestial bodies is needed to explore space and permitted.
  7. Orbital Debris.

The full Artemis Accords wording can be found here: https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Artemis-Accords-signed-13Oct2020.pdf

The Orbital Debris (Section 12) is an interesting addition and includes both reduction of the present debris and requiring all new space structures come with a de-orbit plan for safe disposal. I also adore the Transparency section.

Fingers-crossed, the spirit of international cooperation will continue.

Biography

Bardan, Roxana. “NASA Welcomes Greece as Newest Artemis Accords Signatory.” NASA. 2024 Feb 9. (https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-welcomes-greece-as-newest-artemis-accords-signatory/ – last viewed 5/22/2024)

Lea, Robert. “Artemis Accords: What are they & which countries are involved?” space.com. 2024 May 16. (https://www.space.com/artemis-accords-explained – last viewed 5/22/2024)

NASA. “The Artemis Accords.” (undated) (https://www.nasa.gov/artemis-accords/ – last viewed 5/22/2024)

US Mission Unvie. “An Interview with NASA’s Kevin Conole.” US Mission to International Organizations in Vienna. 2022 February 25. (https://vienna.usmission.gov/nasas-kevin-conole-on-the-artemis-accords/ – last viewed 5/22/2024)

Wikipedia. “Artemis Accords.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_Accords – last viewed 5/22/2024

Editing Rant: Medium Matters

Photo 2865655 © R. Gino Santa Maria / Shutterfree, Llc | Dreamstime.com (Picture paid for)

“The movie isn’t as good as the book.” “I don’t know why people think this statue is so great, I mean look at this photo of it.” “This song is awful (when played on my phone).”

“Medium” in art covers both the skill set needed to create the art (painting, photography, scrapbooking, violin, orchestra), and the materials used to create the artwork (marble, wood, instrument).

And when judging art, Medium Matters. One of the most amazing books I read was an urban fantasy by Darin Kennedy, The Mussorgsky Riddle. The mystery centered around a piano suite in ten movements (Pictures at an Exhibition) written by Mussorgsky, inspired by paintings at a show in the Imperial Academy of Arts from Viktor Hartmann. Plot, piano, and paintings mixed together (and if you hear it on audiobook, another artist is added into the mix).

Not any one medium is better than the other, but being aware of the limitations can help one appreciate the transference of art from one medium to another. How is a painting different from a sculpture? What happens when pop music is played by an orchestra (as sometimes happens with songs by Queen)? Should we judge a book against a movie or are they two different things with two different audiences?

I recently heard people comparing a single book to the three-season television show which spun off it, saying the secondary characters, which developed as the television show ran beyond the original story, lacked depth in the book. No kidding. Yet both the book and the television show felt the same as they explored victory and growth, adulthood and loss.

Other conversations I had recently compared black and white movies to technicolor television. Comics to graphic novels – and I’m not talking about long comics, I’m talking about well-loved science fiction and fantasy novels translated to book format, for example “More than Human” by Theodore Sturgeon (published 1953) released as a hardback graphic novel in 1978. Each of these have their own particular imprint on my soul.

Pulling this back to writing and reading. Medium Matters. Figure out what best fits your story. Is it a flash (under 1,000 words) or novel (75,000 words)? Should it be shrunk to a short story (5,000 words) or will a novella length be better (20,000 words)? Will one hundred words, precisely, for a drabble be the right size? Should it be a play, or a serial? Could it work in audiobook, and, if so, should one person or a cast read it?

Choose the presentation of the story. Write it to the end, then carve it like a statue until only the parts that should be there remain.

Book Review: Starter Villain

Amazon Cover

Starter Villain by John Scalzi

BOOK BLURB ON AMAZON

Inheriting your uncle’s supervillain business is more complicated than you might think. Particularly when you discover who’s running the place.

Charlie’s life is going nowhere fast. A divorced substitute teacher living with his cat in a house his siblings want to sell, all he wants is to open a pub downtown, if only the bank will approve his loan.

Then his long-lost uncle Jake dies and leaves his supervillain business (complete with island volcano lair) to Charlie.

But becoming a supervillain isn’t all giant laser death rays and lava pits. Jake had enemies, and now they’re coming after Charlie. His uncle might have been a stand-up, old-fashioned kind of villain, but these are the real thing: rich, soulless predators backed by multinational corporations and venture capital.

It’s up to Charlie to win the war his uncle started against a league of supervillains. But with unionized dolphins, hyper-intelligent talking spy cats, and a terrifying henchperson at his side, going bad is starting to look pretty good.

In a dog-eat-dog world…be a cat.

 

MY REVIEW

A Whole Treat

Scalzi knows how to create imaginary worlds where an every-man protagonist moves through the “crazy” with grace and common sense to the amusement of his readers. Starter Villain is a perfect example of his mastery of the humor science fiction genre. I wish his worlds featured women with more agency, but I understand the author is basically doing a self-insert into the fantasy world so the main character will be male for him based on his usual style of writing.

Starter Villian is a fun, light-hearted romp with all the cool gadgets and villains of James Bond. Plus a layered plot, complicated characters, and dense world-building which is only noticeable after the fact when you go “I need to make this review longer, was the book actually good, not just enjoyable?” So yeah, the icing is pretty and the cake is fantastic.