May 2023 - trundling through the archives

Jeannette Bedard

May 1, 2023

Hi Everyone,

I’m in an interesting place fiction writing wise. Book three of my Encoded Orbits trilogy is off to the editor and I haven’t decided yet if I’ll write more books with those characters. I have a draft novel ready to edit—but then that shiny idea struck and I’ve delved right into putting together a full out line (and testing Plotrr, a new outline software I’m trying out).

A major place in the story revolves around an abandoned military air control tower—one now overgrown with blackberries and covered by graffiti. The idea for this came from an abandoned place I visited as a child.

Every summer a group of us roamed the back roads on our bikes, the first season of Stranger Things left me strangely nostalgic because that group of kids roamed on bikes like we did (as an aside, we never had to deal with any paranormal horror).

One of the places we visited was an abandoned sawmill built around 1912. I found a video tour of the place and it looks as I remember it, except the graffiti has changed.

What the video only hints at at the end is there’s a basement. When I was a kid, we went around one of the sides to an open entrance to the basement. It was dark and wet—pools of water looked to reach up past ankle height. But most of all it was creepy—even back then it seemed like the right sort of place for a horror movie or an entrance to another world. We dared each other to go inside and explore—but none of us ever did.

The old sawmill percolates up in my thoughts from time to time, especially how haunted it felt. It’s a delightful memory (I know that sounds weird), and a place I’ve morphed into an air control tower (for plot reasons) and am finally using in a piece of fiction.

My old blog…

I decided to take down my blog, mostly because payment for web hosting was due and I’m not quite sure what to do with it. I kept the domain, so I have to option to reform it in the future, but for now, I’ve pulled all the posts onto this feed. I haven’t gone through them in detail, but it looks like they came through okay and kept their images (I don’t vouch for any of the links). If you are curious check out the archives.

Trundling through the archives I came up with these gems:

The Altered Book

Above is a page out of the altered book I’m working on (it was once a history of Japan written decades ago and it has the nicest feeling paper). I’m trying to alter a two-page spread every morning and am enjoying the process greatly.

Finally, I’m going to share this - because space elevators! (I perhaps enjoyed it more than I should).

Cheers,

Jeannette

My Books:

Hope is the Thing With Feathers - direct or from the shops

Encoded Orbits

Fractured Orbits - direct or from the shops
The Alien Algorithm - direct or from the shops

Settler Chronicles

Lunar Escape - here or here
Day 115 on an Alien World - direct or from the shops
Far Side of the Moon - direct or from the shops
Abandoned Ships, Hijacked Minds - direct or from the shops
The Alien Artifact - direct or from the shops

And if you aren’t already a subscriber, what’s stopping you (especially if you have read this far)?