Jack of Harts

I just finished writing a new story. The funny thing is, I didn’t know what story I was writing even a week ago. This is really late for me by the way. I usually write my stories months before I need them and then leave them be until the deadline I wrote them for comes up.

Two weeks ago, I did another run through the Racanteur Press open submissions and saw the “Big Freakin’ Robots” thang. Now I don’t tend to write that anymore. I used to do it all the time. I was “inside the onion” of the BattleTech game over a decade ago, and writing BattleTech fan fiction is literally how I trained myself to write stories. I was a fact checker, a beta reader, and an official demo agent for the game. I was even one of the core people who helped them at conventions, and was one of the guys they trusted to help pack their booth up at the end. But… clutch your pearls and take a deep breath… I’m a conservative and I don’t hide my beliefs in a closet. So that whole chapter of my life came to an end a little over a decade ago. You’ll still see my name on stuff they are printing even now because my fingers touched a lot of pies, but I haven’t done anything with them since. And I don’t tend to write a lot of “Big Freakin’ Robot” action anymore.

For one thing, I’m not going to write BattleTech fan fiction and then try to sell it with a serial number filed off. I may steal other peoples’ ideas and put them in my stories, but I am an honest thief. For another, I’ve always been more a fan of space combat than mech combat, so I focus my Jack of Harts stories on space combat. So when I saw the “Big Freaking’ Robot” call a few months ago I shrugged and went on. Wasn’t interested. Now Jack is a Republic of Texas Marine in my Jack of Harts stories, so while he focuses on space combat, put him in any environment and he will go out and kill things. It basically means I can write stories in any environment I feel like. So two weeks ago, I looked at the open submissions and realized I wanted to write “Big Freakin’ Robot” action.

So I started the brainstorming process to see if I would actually do it. Wrote down some notes. Gathered some characters from the Jack stories that I thought would work. Threw them all together and let the story start percolating in the mental cloud I call, “I want to write these stories.”

A week ago, I looked at one of my coworkers in my “day” job and told her that I had a story I needed to write. I went home, and I started writing it. Some of the characters didn’t make the final cut because they weren’t driving the story forward. Another background character got added because I needed him to drive the story forward. And by this week, I had a recognizable story that I could walk away from and let percolate in the part of my mental cloud labeled “I have written this story. What the hell do I do now?”

I did not have a title at this point, by the way. I didn’t even have a story. I had a timeline of events and scenes written out. A Republic of Texas Marine Corps unit performing a High Altitude Low Orbit drop on a planet culminating in “Big Freakin’ Robots” action. I came back after a while, read the story again, and saw the common threads in each scene. Saw the STORY I’d written, and did a quick run through all the scenes to make certain they all pointed to THAT story. Cleaned some things up. Looked at it with a nod of approval, and walked away. Put it in the cloud called “This is a story. I need to publish it.”

I still did not have a title. I usually have a title before I write the story. This is coming up REAL CLOSE to submission time, and I still don’t know what my title is. This is really not normal for me. So I walk away and watch some Bad Batch. Surprisingly good story. I like it. Did that. Did other things. Came back yesterday to do final edit. Finding the words I thought I put there but didn’t. Or the extra words I didn’t realize were there. Looked at the story, and found the title. That story I’d found earlier and made certain was the focus from beginning to end? That was the title.

And that is how “Best Laid Plans” got written in two weeks and submitted ten minutes before the end of the day on submission day. Because I couldn’t pull the bloody title out of my subconscious until then. I hope they pick it. If they don’t, I’ll have a story to hold on to for another day. Maybe publish on my own. Maybe send to someone to see if they want to publish it. Haven’t decided yet. But whenever you get the chance to read it, if you choose to do so, know that “Best Laid Plans” by Medron Pryde was written because the fine folks at Racanteur put out an open call for “Big Freakin’ Robot” action and I decided to answer the call.

😉