"Expectant Green" with John Kenny in Jupiter 35

"Expectant Green", my first collaboration with Irish speculative fiction author and editor, John Kenny, is now available in Jupiter 35, edited by Ian Redman with a terrific cover from Sam Mardon. My first publication for 2012 and its my favorite genre, space opera, and out in print and epub formats. An extract follows:

EXPECTANT GREEN

David Conyers and John Kenny

One hundred days disappeared in a single second while I was dead, or as near dead as you could get without crossing over to that unknown country.

I was in cryosuspension along with twelve-hundred other passengers, encased in the hull of a wormhole transgressor bound for Morrocoy in the Sagan-89 System. Morrocoy was the last place in the galaxy I wanted to be, but I didn’t have a choice in the matter.
  

With that curious sense of dislocation engendered by cryosleep, I opened my eyes and felt, despite an unchanged view of diamond glass and life support readouts, that I was somewhere else.

A familiar face approached; all smiles and warmth.  “Mum!” I cried before I crawled into her arms, held her tight and sobbed.

  

Another woman spoke to me. Her tone sounded cautious. “I’m sorry Ms. Leyton, but I think you’ve mistaken me for someone else.” When I didn’t move, afraid to, the stranger said:  “I’m Nereda Courtemanche, your CS recovery nurse.”

  

I looked up, saw that the woman who held me was no more than a few years my senior. She had a pretty face like my mother, but with freckles and red instead of dark hair worn in a ponytail.

  

“Oh, I am so sorry.”

  

I quickly clambered from of her arms. I couldn’t look at her. I felt like I was about to die.

  

“This is so embarrassing. I’m so sorry.”

  

I tried to run, but tripped on wobbly legs.

  

The nurse caught me. “That’s okay, Francesca.” She supported me gently, sat me down. “Just give yourself a minute. Waking from CS is disorientating for anyone. I felt the same three days ago when I woke.”

   

I glimpsed at Nereda through the corner of my eye. At least I had not imagined her smile, which still beamed for me.

   

“Let me find where your mother is, and I’ll reunite you.”

  

“She’s not here,” I blurted.

  

“Oh. Sorry to hear that.” Nereda clasped her hands together tightly. “You must really miss her?”

I didn’t respond. I should have said something to make her feel better, even if I couldn’t feel that way myself.

  

She scratched the back of her head, her eyes wandered, searched for something other than me to focus on. “Well, you’ve arrived Francesca Leyton. Morrocoy is where you leave us, right?”

  
I nodded.

  

“Is someone waiting to meet you?”

   

“I hope...yes, someone will...meet me.”

   

“Well that’s good. Good luck down there.”

   

Nereda gave me three cups of water, helped me to dress, then left me with one of the ship AI’s extensor bots which made me perform a regime of stretching exercises. By the time I was done I no longer felt disorientated and was ready to tell Nereda the real reason why my mother wasn’t with me, but she was long gone.

  

With remarkable swiftness, given that the transgressor had travelled so many light years across the galaxy for so long, I was processed through customs and security where, despite my protests all my tech items where confiscated from my luggage, and shuttled to the planet’s only spaceport. No one else smiled at me, and all I could feel as the blue-green planet grew large through the view portals was empty and cold.

  

An hour later I was blinking in the bright sunlight, standing in the hot, dusty street watching a motley crew of locals shamble along, dragging pack animals behind them.

   

I thought about what I had wanted to say to the Nereda, but I couldn’t quiet believe what had happened myself. Only three weeks ago subjective time I had been standing over the destroyed body of my mother. The distance I had travelled and the stark contrasts between Mars and this alien planet conspired to place the death of my mother at a remove that seemed almost a lifetime ago. And yet the loss of her was so recent that the reality of her absence had not sunk in; I felt nothing, couldn’t feel anything. Being thrust into this new and foreign environment promised only to extend the duration of my numbness.

   

Sweeping my shoulder length hair back and into a scrunchy, I fished a beaked cap from my travel bag to shade my eyes. Now I could better see the dilapidated sun-scorched wooden buildings that lined the unpaved street that stretched east and west for a couple of hundred metres before meeting walls of dense jungle foliage. Along this stretch a number of streets branched off to the north towards the main part of the town.

   

No sign of my father. Wearily, I unfolded the piece of paper handed to me by the porter as I had exited the building behind me. Oh, great. It gave the name of the hotel where I could find my one surviving parent and directions on how to get there. Heaving a sigh of tiredness and frustration, I hitched my travel bag on my shoulder and marched towards the first turnoff heading north.

   

If I’d told Nereda what had really happened to my mother I would have cried for a very long time. I couldn’t help wondering if I would have felt better now if I had.

To Collaborate or not to Collaborate

Through my writing career I’ve ended up collaborating with various authours, and while I’ve gained much from the experience, I know many authors out there are reluctant to do so. Not me it seems. I’ve worked with Brian M. Sammons (“Stomach Acid” and “Six-Legged Shadows”), John Goodrich (“The Masked Messenger”), David Witteveen (“Sweat as Decay”), John Sunseri (“The Spiraling Worm”) and John Kenny (an unpublished science fiction piece) and I’ve enjoyed what I’ve got out of each collaboration and the end story we’ve created. I’ve also discussed the possibility with other authors of doing collaborations, including with David Kernot and C.J. Henderson, if we can ever get the time.

What I find works well for me is what I have learnt from the experience. Brian is taught me how to really cut to the heart of story, John Goodrich on how to tell a story without explicitly telling it, David in writing sincint poetical scenes, John Sunseri how to make language and character create a style all of its own, and John Kenny the importance of pace and reflective prose. I’ve learnt much more from each of these authors than just what I’ve listed, here I’m illustrating particular elements of learning that were unexpected for me in the process. The end result is that I feel that I’m a better writer because of these experiences, and it also taught me how to be humble and not so hung up on the in’s and out’s of a particular story. Oh, and to let a story tell itself.

The other reason I like collaborating is because of the creativity it allows.

I’m currently writing another novella with Brian M. Sammons, which is the reason for this post. I’m finding that even before we’ve started ideas are just flowing all over the place and we feed off each other’s perspective, so much so that the tale just seems to write itself. We are both very excited about where it is headed.

Most of my collaborations have been with horror and dark fantasy writers, a genre that seems to bring authors together rather than creating a sometimes overly negative competitive environment that I’m finding in some speculative fiction ‘scenes’. From my experience horror and dark fantasy writers tend to get excited about what each other are writing, and want to share. How nice is that!

Collaboration can potentially create its own problems. For example my most successful series, the Harrison Peel spies versus the Cthulhu Mythos series (The Spiraling Worm) is not a sole-creation of my own, but one that had a genesis with John Sunseri and now with Brian M. Sammons, C.J. Henderson and John Goodrich. We’ve all agreed that our characters are our own (mine is Harrison Peel, John Sunseri’s in Jack Dixon, C.J. Henderson is Joan De Molina and Brian M. Sammons’ is Jordan - amongst others) and that we need to seek permission to use each other’s characters, but we also agree that we can each pretty much do whatever we like in this shared world setting. So what happens if I get a movie or game deal for The Spiraling Worm (not saying it is likely, but it is a possibility), what do we do then? Hopefully we’ll all get financial rewarded, and that’s what I’d like to see.

So leading on from this point, I’ve decided that some series I will collaborate on (such as the Harrison Peel series) and some I won’t which I want to hold complete control over (such as my Earth Central series for example featuring stories including “Black Water”, “Aftermath”, “The Entropy Collapse”, “Terraformer”, “The Octagon” and others). Of course stories that aren’t part of any series (“Sweat as Decay”) don’t really matter, they are stand alones, but fun to write nonetheless.

Fun times ahead, seeing where all this collaboration business goes.