Memento Mori

Memento Mori

Remember your mortality

Hesger was once a gem of the Outer Rim; a young colony on a small forest world, important for its scientific prowess, and popular among holidaymakers for its beautiful scenery and health spas.

...all that was before the arrival of "Heff", Hesgeri haemorrhagic fever. Released accidentally by one of the teams researching a cure, the bioweapon tears unchecked through the population, in only a few years killing all but a handful of mutilated survivors calling themselves “blights”. Under a self-imposed planetwide quarantine, the technological revolution collapses, and the cities grow derelict, with even electricity and running water turning into nothing but a distant memory.

It is on this abandoned world that Blink, a lovelorn robot girl trying to find a place to belong, finds herself; abducted, dumped and stranded, after a failed attempt to break into the mysterious Kust Institute of Science. With a future that looks pretty bleak, a dying cross-dimensional being “gifts” her with a new, biological body – a gift that is meant to help her survive, but feels more like a curse.

Blink must now come to terms not just with her new body and newfound mortality, but also that she may be trapped on this world for the rest of her life, with no way to even tell her family what has happened, and in constant danger from those who... don't precisely have her best interests in mind. Perhaps most importantly, however, she and her new friends must figure out the hidden extra that came with Frond's unwanted gift – a hidden extra that might just save the planet.

Information

19th Sept 2012: I am delighted to report that the first draft of Memento Mori is complete!

Places and Races - details on the planet Hesger, the virus (Hesgeri Haemorrhagic Fever, or "heff"), and the danata.

Pages in progress: Character list (Current page is just a placeholder.)

Extracts and Previews

"Memento Mori" on LiveJournal and Dreamwidth - this was updated on a semi-regular basis, every time I finished a chapter. Although the story itself is now complete, the community itself is still available to those who prefer reading it this way, or have a comment to make on individual chapters.

Start at the Prologue: Livejournal / Dreamwidth.

Memento Mori (part one, draft one). The first 18 "chapters", as uploaded to Livejournal, but in PDF form for ease of reading. Just over 2Mb, close to 80k words.

Memento Mori (part two, draft one). As above, the second 15 "chapters". Just over 2Mb, almost 93k words.

Art

Click on the thumbnails for the full versions; some linked here are also in the site gallery, so you may have seen them before. NB: not all art for this project has been uploaded, some is intended to be available only in the print version (although - as ever! - this may change!).

                          

In Print!

When I finish a piece of writing, I like to get it printed into a "proper book", usually by a print-on-demand publisher (Lulu, in this case). It makes it feel "properly finished", as it were. (Even though I haven't even touched the editing stage, haha.)

It surprised me how physically big the book ended up being (A5 in size, and almost 2cm thick) - and the internal text isn't exactly huge! Although I suppose I should have expected it, at just over 170,000 words.

Watch this space!