An excerpt and some thoughts.

  Little bit of Running out of Space, one of my works in progress, it comes in after the main character Caleb O'Hearn has been talking about the history of Psionics and language in the Magiverse to demonstrate his genetic memory from his Magi heritage, that bit is about six hundred words itself and it's a little bit lecturing but part of the rolling history into the story without it being just flung at you so I'm not going to post that. After the excerpt there are a few thoughts of mine on shared universes and collaboration between writers and shared timelines.

****************

'But it's funny to watch you drone on and not even realise it though, but also educational. Learned a little piece about my own heritage while bored shitless about yours.' Kerry-Anne told him and he flipped his middle finger at her. 'That wasn't Magi ancestor knowledge, all of your Magi ancestors were Hunters, Guardians and Soldiers. Where did that come from?'

'Sarah of Trenton, her sire's sire was a Professor of Germanic Languages at the University of New Amsterdam.' He replied with a grimace. 'When the hippie pothead wasn't on a commune.'

'Your warrior attitude would be an embarrassment to him as much as he's an embarrassment to you.' Kerry-Anne chuckled at him. 'Hell his granddaughter was an embarrassment for joining the FIB. He considered the whole notion of war and Big Government pointless.'

'War is fuckin pointless.' O'Hearn sighed and Kerry-Anne gave him a look of surprise. 'Show me a true warrior that wouldn't rather he never had to fight again, and I'll show you a damned liar or a homicidal maniac that should never be in uniform, like dear old dad. It is true, I am never more alive when I am chasing down prey or fighting hand-to-hand in a struggle to the death, but I've been stabbed, shot, sliced open, gouged, blown up, and had to heal from those wounds too many times in what has not been the longest life. I would really rather that I could spend the rest of my considerable life time with my feet up until I'm old enough that it's the end for me and one last battle for me to shuffle off the mortalish coil and sit in Bilskirnir until I am needed  once more.'

************************************

 This plus everything else I'm working on, is running through my mind constantly, interlinking all the Magiverse stories can be a bit of work, especially when you are jumping two thousand years from the time of Gabriel to the time of Caleb,  and even when I jump just under a hundred years to my cyberpunk work, totally inspired by Continuum and Shadowrun, Corporate governments and Megacorporations.

Haven't seen series two of Continuum beyond the third episode been too busy with writing and painting soldiers. I can have TV shows in the background if I've seen them before but if it's new I have to actually sit and concentrate on it. But I'm getting off topic.

When I'm doing the Cyberpunk I have to remember what the map of Gabriel's Terra looks like even though it's all in my head (not the best idea, right now it's a bit fluid), trying to fit the Corporate Nations later in the timeline to nations from earlier in the timeline and then having to remember to use the right names in Caleb's time can hurt your head sometimes but I love reading shared universe fiction, and seeing how they evolve and how the stories evolved from where, granted you don't normally see three different periods on a timeline at the same time but that's me, glutton for the punishment I put upon myself.

I always wanted to be one of those authors that inspires collaboration with his fellow writers, I think that's what makes the Roleplaying, Comic book and TV & Movie shared universes so fun to immerse yourself in is the vibrant and many voiced reality, that no-one person is telling the story. Don't get me wrong they always need a strong hand to guide the ship and some of my favourite books series are written by one hand but I still believe it doesn't happen nearly enough in Sci-fi and Fantasy fiction that many hands help to form a better universe unless they tie in with a TV series or Movies or RPG's. 

Often enough authors will have others write for short story anthologies from their Universe which they edit,  but I think personally that D&D settings especially the Forgotten Realms Novels and even the Games Workshop forever dubbed the Evil Empire, fictional universes are made so much better, deeper and more real by the dozens of authors that write in the universe, though I'm sure most authors wouldn't like giving up money they would make writing their own work. 

People I'm sure will quote the expansions of the Cthulhu Mythos, the Man-Kzin Wars that added to Larry Niven's Known space, the expansion of Asimov's Foundation series and the adding to Lyman Frank Baum's (A prophet was he) Oz, the additions to Robert Howard's (Himself a Cthulhu Mythos expander) Conan, to me but I will also point out none of these except the Man-Kzin wars were ever done in the original author's lifetime.

But I won't deny that's always something nice to see, people trying to anticipate what would this author have written about next if he hadn't passed onto the halls of Valhalla, and I do applaud that, I would however like to see more authors collaborating to expand their own universes.

That's my end for today, off to the Falkirk District Wargames Club tonight, so dinner and work out an army, which I should have done last week when I was sitting on my arse at the club.