D3RP & PR0XY (Early Preview №1)

Okay, so it's time for the first preview of D3RP & PR0XY. In the spirit of being someone with a few 90s laptops lying around with age-appropriate operating systems (Windows 98 with a dial-up modem), that's the computer that's going to be doing most of the editing and bookwork (sans the upcoming week, of course). Anyway, you're going to see the welcoming pieces of their lives. Penelope isn't a Greg House (like a certain Soviet Vyatka we know and thankfully don't exist with), though she still doesn't let anything go. Jayden, on the other hand, knows how to be a decent person in general and to not use her talents for making a sweet $20k from digital murder. Granted, that's not to say either of them are without their flaws. Follow along as Penelope and Jayden go about their daily lives, first in Bellevue, then to Chunking, Tientsen, and Tungking. Everyone else, however, calls it Tokyo, but the girl uses a lot of Mandarin when she speaks. Anyway, follow along as Penelope shows where a once-troubled outcast truly shines.

Hidden in Plain Sight

Alright, as promised before, Hidden in Plain Sight is now live! Some details in this book aren't the final design for George & Julie… mostly minute things, nothing big. Anyway, with that being said, here is the link to the book on Kobo, or, as always, the original post remains public.

D3RP & PR0XY Release Info

Okay, so it's finally happening: Penelope Turner/譚平寧/タン・ピンニン/탄핑닝 (Pr0xy) and Jayden Hester (D3rp) are being released to the public! They're my last duo to be showcased, so that's good (I'll certainly have one-off characters after, though), though this does mean I have some different things to say about Pingning now, though the gist of it is relatively the same. Put simply, though, she's what the spiritual predecessor to Aleks would've been (dark days), which is why their behaviors are like twisted, fun-house versions of each other, as well as having many similar interests. As with basically all of my characters, these two have a troubled past as well (Penelope more than Jayden, but still), but Jayden is definately the people-person of the two. Penelope (unlike Aleks and Chloe) wouldn't make a brick wall cry if she ran into it, but her first car did have a person-shaped dent in the door for a while, if her experience with a bully is anything to go by. Penelope's existence is almost paradoxical to Aleks's, but she is technically not him. He drives a 1983 Plymouth K Wagon with an air conditioner and automatic transmission being the only two features on the car, Penelope drove a 1983 Chevrolet Cavalier Wagon until it bit the dust in 2022, when she replaced it with a mid-range VW Jetta. Aleks hoards anything and everything because of its uses while Penelope is selective about her "junk" (she used to use an Acer Aspire 4752z laptop in school, her work computer is from 1997, and she has two laptops from the late 90s). Aleks is a Soviet when it matters, Penelope is the "Non-Asian Asian" (she usually indulges in Chinese or Japanese culture if it comes up). The list goes on, it really does, but while Penelope & Jayden are in Bellevue, WA, the lives they lead can be interesting, even if one spends her days locked in a tech cave.

Update on Hidden in Plain Sight: Nearing the Ready Date!

The story of how George & Julie spent four years (more-or-less) is soon going to be open to the public for all to see! Another character makes a cameo close to the end (brownie points if you catch it), so that's something to look out for as well. Assuming everything goes smoothly, it should be ready for purchase from the Kobo Ebook Store.

George and Julie, now on the run from her "father", Nasovar, for four years, brings the WitSec chapter of their life to a close after making an impact elsewhere in the world first.

I'm not sure if I've said it before on here or not, but I've wanted to write a story in the WitSec genre for years now, and it's finally happened- one that I'm actually proud of. The others are probably going to go into an archive of some kind that won't be opened back up for reading until the day comes when I have grand kids that pester me about ideas I had and things I tried to do when I was younger.

Maybe, maybe not.

Anyway, Hidden in Plain Sight has a second reason for existing, and that reason is the same as another work I have elsewhere (the nature of the work makes me uncomfortable, but everything else about it turned out great for developing Penelope's world. Net win, end of story.), which is to be a character development thing. I do intend on continuing the George & Julie series, although some things in Hidden in Plain Sight are going to be different in future George & Julie novellas (nothing big, just minor details and maybe a couple of name changes).

I'll go ahead and share a few details that are staying:

1. Ren Ya Dang (Julie's favorite author) is a self-insert. (The name literally translates to Person Adam)
2. Julie is more a part of George's family than her own
3. Julie's ability to speak Japanese and read Old English
4. George's abilities in music, his original career, and fluency in Middle English
5. George's uncle being (almost) always on vacation somewhere
6. Julie's feelings about why she wants to be a teacher

I don't know that everything in this novella was wrapped up in a nice-enough bow at the end, but that wasn't the point (even if it was the final iteration of George & Julie). The point is that no matter who you are, what you say, or where you go, there's a niche to carve out in the world that is yours and yours alone. Life doesn't always end situations with "And they lived happily ever after… the end", no. Sometimes, we're left to sift through the nitty and gritty ourselves, or to put someone else in charge of something.

Now that I've yammered on for this long (and it's 2:49 AM), I'm planning on having the book released around May 25, as well as doing an immersive experience that gets posted here and on Thefacebook sometime in the coming months, though I can't really say much for the latter apart from that I want to do it at some point as nothing is set into stone (I literally only had the idea the other night), but I'd like to see how this one turns out with other people. Hopefully, you guys have as much fun reading it as I had writing it.

How to Blog Like Penelope Turner and Hidden in Plain Sight (Early Preview №5)

In the spirit of starting my next series, I would like to go about this in the form that one of my characters would (I'm not pretending to be something I'm not, the whole internet would run on Windows 3.1 or Memphis if I had anything to say about it, actually). Anyway, some of the people close to me know that I'll do any and every absurd thing for accuracy, using a Compaq Presario 1200 with Windows 98 is included in that mix. Put simply, that picture is how I'm doing this post: writing in StarOffice 8 on Windows 98 and (because Google doesn't like Browservice) sending the file to my desk to copy-paste onto the blog with the pictures included. Anyway, enough about my mental insanity (or creativity, if you prefer a different out-of-the-box term) and onto Hidden in Plain Sight!

Put simply, the novella is coming to a close, but it's not as elegant as what I originally wanted it to be. Still, I don't think it's going to end up a terrible finish (there's a timeskip at the end that you can read so far into), but sometimes, our dreams and thoughts aren't feasible in the real world, and there's nothing wrong with that. We might not be happy something turned out the way it did, but there's always a way that it could be worse. To put my dedication to whatever I'm doing with my life out in the open, I'm (mostly) blogging from a Windows 98 computer for the fun of it, writing on it, even sifting through cards that are similar in capabilities to the ones I reference (though they're all pretty basic at this point). Nothing is going to get me to change my mind about this- it's fun this way, end of story.

--

[PREVIEW]

By 8:15, George and Julie were on the interstate. George was going a little slower than traffic was, setting the cruise control at 70. Julie was in the passenger seat, only having gotten rid of her tears about an hour prior. Despite her insistence, George wouldn’t tell her what he was planning, though she came prepared for what might come next, if need-be. While Julie’s new car could easily get 41 miles per gallon on the highway, that number dropped by six or seven points at interstate speeds, assuming the LCD screen on the gauge cluster was anything to go by. Julie didn’t take much notice when George turned off at Exit 1A, she was still wrapped up in her own thoughts about the past eon-and-a-half. The highway he needed to use was, thankfully, near-empty at this time of night.

At one point, it had been the major corridor for the area, but since the metro was kicked into high gear and the 374 was built to bring the network to the metro, the highway operated usually well-under capacity.

“We’re here,” George said, killing the engine at a tiny Chinese restaurant.

“Khue-tsr?”

“It opened a few days after we moved for the first time,” George said, “There was one in Florida that I loved so much, but it’s since closed.”

“O- oh… wow.”

“Yup,” George said as they went inside.

The restaurant held very few tables, though the authenticity of it was unmatched by any Asian place they’d been to before. Of course, they’d never been to China, but when your entire restaurant looks like a Subway with a hotbar of Asian foods, you just know there’s something very much lost. Then again, Panda Express was a fast food joint, so that needed to be taken into consideration too.

“It’s… nice,” Julie said, looking at some of the artwork as they sat down to a table, “I wonder where the name of the place comes from, though.”

“Tell you what,” George said, getting the menu and handing it to her, “When we go up there to order, we’ll ask then.”

“Alright,” she said, picking out her order and handing the thing to George.

Even though she could read Chinese characters to a degree… she still had never seen them written in calligraphy. To Julie, Asian scripts were more art than writing. In Japan, if you want to write the word for “east”, it was basically a picture of the Sun rising behind a tree. “Person” was a person, “mountain” was a stick figure of a mountain- it was beautiful to her, basically art in the same sense as the Anglo Saxon runes, except each character stood for an idea, not a single sound.

Soon, they’d made their decisions, so George went to order, leaving Julie to her own thoughts for a moment.

Round-eyed Japanese chick, that’s funny. Mom had some cousins in Kitakyushu, Okayama, and Hamamatsu, I think. They probably haven’t heard any redneck humor in their lives, they’d love it.

“She said it’s Wu,” George said, setting their drinks down as he came back.

“I thought it was some form of Chinese,” she said as George’s brow furrowed, “Wu is a Chinese language.”

“Oh!”

“Wouldn’t be a normal date if something didn’t go way over you,” Julie chuckled as a plate of rangoons and sauce was brought over to the table.

[END OF PREVIEW]

Hello, Jen!

Hello, my name is Maurice Moss! I'm currently typing this up on an old phone- Android Operating System version Gingerbread was a great operating system! It's a shame Vista didn't follow in its footsteps. Anyway, I just thought I'd come back to the internet while my lunch is being made (a bowl of Smarties cereal won't keep me going for the whole day). Anyway, should I come up with an idea for a proxy to allow computers such as the IBM PS/2 an adequate way to get online, as well as build my own network card? I'll let you guys point me in the right direction. For now, I need to head back to the office and check to see if my email has made it to the fire department about the fire that has started over an hour ago. After the last extinguisher caught fire and 0118-999-881-999-119-7253 didn't correctly connect me to the emergency services (how hard is it to remember 999?), I thought I would just send an email when there was a fire. All the best, Maurice Moss.

--

Okay, now that Moss is back in the basement with the rest of The IT Crowd (hopefully the fire is being dealt with this time), I'm more than a little curious to see how some of my earlier stuff might come to an end (namely, in high school, I'd leave class with my laptop, go into the library, get a cup of coffee and write for most of the block. None of those stories ever could finish, a plague that affects some works even now). Part of the reason, I'm guessing, is that I would associate finishing a story with the death of a chapter or universe, though I guess I'm growing out of it now because I can bring things to a (for me, at least) satisfying close while keeping the fact that they are still there well-known, though its hard when you don't draw lines just right.

Eh, nobody's perfect, so we all make mistakes and learn from them.

Hidden in Plain Sight is on the home stretch, but its finishing is being plagued by the above text (me thinking about the lives of George & Julie outside of the window of the novel, to be specific). When you write something in the way that Steven Universe was written (namely, leaving the story open-ended with the knowledge that they have their own lives to lead) and you can relate to its elements on a fundamental level (the characters, story, struggles, etc), it makes it hard to stay on topic, especially if you're internally having to weed-out the other stuff, most (if not all) of which would simply be filler and nothing else. Granted, if you're willing to branch off to multiple things at a time, you'd likely have a hard drive full of bits, pieces, and snippets that don't quite go with themselves. The first part in June, I'll be on leave from everything, so my goal is to have Hidden in Plain Sight finished and published by May 31 so I can start bringing Penelope and Jaden (Derpy) to life.

Apart from the first part of June, nothing here is really set in stone- these are just my plans. Some days, I can sit down to my computer and get 5k/+ words typed in just an hour or two… others, I can sit for sixteen hours and get a sentence written.

Whelp, anyway, I don't know what else to put in this post, but if anyone has any suggestions for what they might like to see in a story, I'll be open to ideas. At least I think that's what the comment section is for? Gotta remember- oldschool and ADHD here, so I'll probably come up with something crazy if anything gets put down there.

Anyway, with that being said, I guess I can send this up to the W3 for you guys to see now. All the best to all of you!