All Comments on 'Starlight Gleaming Ch. 14'

One of my Christmas wishes just came true! Thanks TJ for more of this epic story.

I just hope we don't have to wait another 8 months for the next chapter. :-)

Thank you so much for your submission. Given your recent health problems, I am pleased you were able to write for us and in such fine style. Please continue when you can and take care.

Regards and good health,

Henry

Chapter 14 is still rough in a few places; in addition, there were a few continuity gaffs, some missing words, a glaring typo, and the unintended hilarious "hard-hard" erection, instead of the half-hard one. Sorry. My bad.

I had planned to make chapter 15 cover Ranji's "training" through his return home. Today, I decided not to do that; 15 covers his arrival and departure. What that means is I have chapter 15 done for a 1st pass, and I'm have way done with a 2nd pass. And, I suddenly have forty pages plus toward chapter 16. Be warned, though, Chapter 15 is a lot darker, with sections of violence and non-con, including male on male.

For those wanting me to hurry up, I must point out that cognition seems to be important. And for those wanting me to hurry up so I can work on the other series, rest assured, the muse is not happy with my production schedule and the punishments are taking place. By falling asleep on the keyboard, I can fill REAMS of text and obtain a nifty face-impression at the same time, but I am quite sure no one will appreciate that kind of effort.

As long as my brain holds out, my plan is to send it off to my reader as soon as I've done a 3rd reading. However, if you wander by and you hear someone calling for brains [insert your own joke here] ...

Happy holidays. Slainté

TJ Skwind

I've read your story from the start and was glad to see a new chapter. Good story.

One observation about time. Early Navies used bells to tell the seamen on board ships the time because clocks were only on the bridge of the ship and watches were to expensive for sailors.

The bell system was based on a 4 hour watch cycle. 8 bells was rung at 0800, 1200, 1600, 2000, 2400 and 0400. Bells were rung every half hour so 0830 was 1 bell , 0900 was 2 bells, 0930 was 3 bells and so on until 1200 at 8 bells. Bells were rung in pairs of 2 with a short pause between pairs. So 0930 would be ^^ ^ . 1200 would be ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ .

How days all military time is a 24 hour clock.

This is just an observation.

Dave

I hope you will provide us with more

I'm really enjoying this series and couldn't stop reading this chapter once I had started. Here's hoping for the great writing to continue and you not to have many more keyboard impressions.

In my fantasy series, I try to use the reference of bells, because most people don't have clocks (those who do have them usually have been to tech worlds), but they do listen to the town bells ring on the hour -- or if the town was too small, the town criers would announce the hours. In Starlight Gleaming, this sort of holds true to, even in that with a world with a higher tech than our own; remember too there are also large sections of the population that illiterate, and hence that some of the characters use the "bells" reference instead of the 24-hour system used by the military, Europe, etc; the Imperial military is centralized, yet it still has a lot of feudal elements (you'll see more of that older system in ch 15). The point is that someone will say hours or bells, and the characters know they equate.

Thank you for pointing the naval system out; I watched all five seasons of Sea Patrol and loved it (though I hated the last episode because I liked Swain!); my father was US Navy - he was a diver during the Bimini Atoll tests (yes, into hot water); he was later a missile and then a satellite engineer. When I get back to the Skyra tales, I hope to write some of the stories about the Elves of Harlindon and their remarkable navy.

I toyed with the idea of having a different time system for the Starlight Gleaming series. The 24 hour system we have is from Babylon, and it's completely arbitrary. The Romans, for example, split the day hours and night hours equally, but the length of a daylight hour would be shorter in winter, and longer in summer. Starlight Gleaming takes place long before Babylon, and it would actually be odd to expect that they would use the 24-hour system; I use it for convenience and to avoid introducing too many strange elements. Ancient China had weeks lasting ten days, which the Shasta (N California) native people oddly also used (a coincidence? or hinting of early travel?). The Mayan calendar used 18 months of 2 weeks each, and each week had ten days. The 19th month had either 5 or 6 days (making 365 or 366 for leap years). A little bit of that was hinted at in chapter 3; in the Mayan calendar, the month has 20 days (two weeks of 10 days), but it's counted from 0 to 19. Yes, the first day of the month is Day Zero, not the 1st. That seems odd most people, but to computer programmers, not so much, as number systems (binary, octal, hex, etc) use that concept on a numeric level.

And yes, I'm taking a lot of historical liberties. Having the Empire of Chimorro -- centered in Queschua, home of the Incas -- use the Mayan system is just one. Nahuatl (aka Aztec) were actually late arrivals linguistically into the Americas. The alternative was invention, because we know almost nothing about the many, many tribes of ancient times. Similarly, sometimes I use Hindi words, but sometimes I alter them just a bit to imply language drift; in actuality, after ten thousand years, modern Hindi speakers and ancient Vedan speakers would be unintelligible to each other.

FWIW, metl juice is what we call tequila; metl is the Nahuatl word for the agave plant, from which it's derived. Cahault is mocha coffee, and believable, since cacao beans and coffee are both New World plants.

Slainté

A very creative plot that is well written. I do hope that you get well soon and continue to create exciting literature for people to enjoy.

That coffee is actually an old world plant, although the story of the gamboling goats is suspiciously apocryphal. Ah well. Chapter 15 is off at the reader, so I hope to post soon!

In the meantime, the Muse demands I get back to work. Yes, the Muse is not amused.

After having reached Chapter 14, I feel the title should Starlight Gleaming: General Hospital.

You have done a great job of getting us interested in the world you created. As readers we love to see more and explore this strange and yet vaguely familiar settings and culture you have spun for. But all we are getting are seemingly unending trips to the hospital!

. . . Very, very well done. Thanks !

And who is this young lady?"

"Call me Ranji."

=>Editing/continuity error

Second time through, still excellent!

My god I can’t express how much I hate the kids in this story. They’re word fluff and completely pointless. Was hoping they were brought on to be killed off quickly for the drama but no. 20 pages long story, you don’t need more fluff