It Would Never Work in Fiction

Some of the odd coincidences that happen in real life would never work if you tried to use them in fiction as plot-bunnies.

1) A friend working in the Emirates ended up on an internal flight sitting next to someone who had owned his house in the UK - two owners back - so they'd never had any contact with each other before.

2) Another friend flew to the USA and ended up sitting next to someone she'd been at school with twenty years earlier.

3) Two acquaintances of mine got married. Not unusual you may think however they'd known each other 30 years ago, lost contact and found each other again quite by chance and the power of the internet. (I had nothing to do with it.) The odd thing was that while they'd been long-lost to each other I'd known both of them for the best part of twenty years. They were from two halves of my life that never coincided.

One, G M, was an ex-patriot, hirsute Yorkshire folk singer, living in Oxford, and the other, L B, an ex-patriot Canadian living in Yorkshire and working for a community project for less able young adults. A couple of years earlier she'd upped and gone back to Canada and I'd all but lost touch. 

I'd heard on the grapevine that G had suddenly - after a seemingly woman-free life - upped and got married to someone from halfway round the world. Someone his friends considered very respectable and not at all G's type. They were amazed by his new-found ladylove and doubly amazed that G had shaved off his long, straggly, folksinger beard and appeared to 'wash-up' very well.

Eventually the wedding photos filtered through to me and I looked at his elegant new bride... and went... but it's L...

If I wrote any of those into a book people would tell me it was too implausible, especially if the plot depended on them.

It Would Never Work in Fiction

Some of the odd coincidences that happen in real life would never work if you tried to use them in fiction as plot-bunnies.

1) A friend working in the Emirates ended up on an internal flight sitting next to someone who had owned his house in the UK - two owners back - so they'd never had any contact with each other before.

2) Another friend flew to the USA and ended up sitting next to someone she'd been at school with twenty years earlier.

3) Two acquaintances of mine got married. Not unusual you may think however they'd known each other 30 years ago, lost contact and found each other again quite by chance and the power of the internet. (I had nothing to do with it.) The odd thing was that while they'd been long-lost to each other I'd known both of them for the best part of twenty years. They were from two halves of my life that never coincided.

One, G M, was an ex-patriot, hirsute Yorkshire folk singer, living in Oxford, and the other, L B, an ex-patriot Canadian living in Yorkshire and working for a community project for less able young adults. A couple of years earlier she'd upped and gone back to Canada and I'd all but lost touch. 

I'd heard on the grapevine that G had suddenly - after a seemingly woman-free life - upped and got married to someone from halfway round the world. Someone his friends considered very respectable and not at all G's type. They were amazed by his new-found ladylove and doubly amazed that G had shaved off his long, straggly, folksinger beard and appeared to 'wash-up' very well.

Eventually the wedding photos filtered through to me and I looked at his elegant new bride... and went... but it's L...

If I wrote any of those into a book people would tell me it was too implausible, especially if the plot depended on them.

Book Log 48/2010 - Charles Stross: The Hidden Family

Charles Stross: The Hidden Family
Merchant Princes #2

Ah, good, a satisfying ending to the second Merchant Princes book while leaving enough loose ends for more books in the series. Miriam is now settling into the idea of being Helge, the long lost countess with a whole heap of money at her disposal courtesy of the Clan who walk between worlds and who are settled in an alternate America that's pretty well stuck in the medieval period. (Castles, mud, poor sanitation and disenfranchised peasants.)

This story opens immediately after The Family Trade finishes and really the two books are one continuous story. At the end of book one Miriam had gone to ground in the regular American world, hiding out with her friend and business partner, Paulette, trying to keep from getting killed by two separate factions from Other America. At the same time she's trying to move her own plans forward for separating the family from its obnoxious trade in liiegal drug smuggling by proving to them that there are better ways of making (even more) money. She suspects there's a third world and finds it via the slightly skewed pattern in a locket taken from a dead assassin.

This book is mostly about Miriam finding that third world, New Britain, and starting up a proftable business in it to prove her business model works. It's another historically diverse America, but still under British rule, at war with the French, so very security oriented, and at a level of technology that thinks steam-driven motor cars and airships are the ideal method of transportation. Miriam's idea is to take the ideas from old (expired?) patents and sell them as new industrial ideas, starting with brake shoes for steam cars. She's advancing tech in New Britain while making money from industrial processes.

But all this has to be done while world walking between the three worlds, which is physically painful and too exhausting to do without resting in between. The only things (or people) that she can bring over must be literally carried across the threshold. So no bringing in fully formed combustion engines or tractors.

And there seems to be a new Clan that no one else knows about. They're based in New Britain and harbour an age-old grudge against the five wealthy world-walking clans in the second world.

So Miriam spends a fair amount of this book trying to be a wheeler-dealer whilst putting together clues to see who her wannabe assassins are. Apart from Paulette, she's still not sure who to trust. Roland, clan member, confidante and forbidden lover, seems to have a question mark hanging over him, as does Brill, her lady in waiting who turns out to be suspiciously handy with all manner of guns. Even Miriam's adoptive mother turns out to have a secret or two.

A good read, but start with The Family Trade or you'll bever catch up with what's gone before.

Book Log 48/2010 - Charles Stross: The Hidden Family

Charles Stross: The Hidden Family
Merchant Princes #2

Ah, good, a satisfying ending to the second Merchant Princes book while leaving enough loose ends for more books in the series. Miriam is now settling into the idea of being Helge, the long lost countess with a whole heap of money at her disposal courtesy of the Clan who walk between worlds and who are settled in an alternate America that's pretty well stuck in the medieval period. (Castles, mud, poor sanitation and disenfranchised peasants.)

This story opens immediately after The Family Trade finishes and really the two books are one continuous story. At the end of book one Miriam had gone to ground in the regular American world, hiding out with her friend and business partner, Paulette, trying to keep from getting killed by two separate factions from Other America. At the same time she's trying to move her own plans forward for separating the family from its obnoxious trade in liiegal drug smuggling by proving to them that there are better ways of making (even more) money. She suspects there's a third world and finds it via the slightly skewed pattern in a locket taken from a dead assassin.

This book is mostly about Miriam finding that third world, New Britain, and starting up a proftable business in it to prove her business model works. It's another historically diverse America, but still under British rule, at war with the French, so very security oriented, and at a level of technology that thinks steam-driven motor cars and airships are the ideal method of transportation. Miriam's idea is to take the ideas from old (expired?) patents and sell them as new industrial ideas, starting with brake shoes for steam cars. She's advancing tech in New Britain while making money from industrial processes.

But all this has to be done while world walking between the three worlds, which is physically painful and too exhausting to do without resting in between. The only things (or people) that she can bring over must be literally carried across the threshold. So no bringing in fully formed combustion engines or tractors.

And there seems to be a new Clan that no one else knows about. They're based in New Britain and harbour an age-old grudge against the five wealthy world-walking clans in the second world.

So Miriam spends a fair amount of this book trying to be a wheeler-dealer whilst putting together clues to see who her wannabe assassins are. Apart from Paulette, she's still not sure who to trust. Roland, clan member, confidante and forbidden lover, seems to have a question mark hanging over him, as does Brill, her lady in waiting who turns out to be suspiciously handy with all manner of guns. Even Miriam's adoptive mother turns out to have a secret or two.

A good read, but start with The Family Trade or you'll bever catch up with what's gone before.