Progress Report and free sample!
17800 words so far this week.
My favorite passage in this week’s work. Montrose has just met (I kid you not) a space princess, and he blacks out and has another fit of momentary super-intelligence (which happens to him because he experimented on his own brain). He thinks he is possessed by another "self" that he calls "Mr. Hyde" who has him do things for reasons he cannot later recall. He comes to himself in the middle of a conversation with Princess Rania:
He was looking right at her face when it happened: her expression returned to normal. It was like watching a ghost fade out of the body of some possessed person on those old faith healer shows everyone in his family save him used to watch so raptly. Like an actress turning off a character and surfacing. But not like an actress. There was nothing fake about it.
She was not panting, but Rania was breathing a little heavily. Long, slow breaths that made her bosom rise and fall. "You’re the other one. Ah. Welcome back.”
“You are possessed too, ain’t you? You are a Mrs. Hyde!”
Rania stared at him quizzically.
“Miss Hyde, I would prefer. I am a maiden yet.” She showed dimples when she smiled. “Unless you are proposing? I warn you, I am spoken for.”
Menelaus backed up, his arm raised as if to ward off a blow. “You are not in love with Del Azarchel!”
“I don’t recall saying I was.”
“You are in love with me.”
“Define your terms,” she said, favoring him with an arch look.
“No normal girl says Define your terms when you say You are in love with me.”
She nodded judiciously. “Being normal is a goal oft sought and rarely achieved, but not unenviable for all that. Statistically speaking, it would be unusual if everyone were average.”
He spun angrily, and caught her by the shoulders. “You are trying to trick me!”
She looked thoughtful, and pouted. “Quite possibly. That is one of the things behind every man-woman relationship.” She shrugged her scented shoulders very slightly in his hands. “Do we have a relationship?”
He let go and stepped back. “Stop toying with me. I cannot trust myself. Either of me.”
“There is only one of you, silly man. And I have no need of feminine wiles, when speaking the truth, as befits a princess, will serve me better…"
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
