Chapter Fourteen – “Is it all over?”
At that point, I didn’t have much left but the cleanup. Still, more often than not, that work’s even harder than the actual sleuthing, because you’re trying to make people whole again who you know are never going to be fully right. You know that far bet...
2025-02-25 10:58:45 +0000 UTC View PostChapter Thirteen – “That Kind Of Story”
Dueling is terrible business.
It’s not a skill you can spend that much time polishing. Sure, if you wanted to, you could spend day in and out focusing on combat, but the proble...
2025-02-25 09:03:14 +0000 UTC View PostSo I'm not immune to writer's block, as much as I wish that I was. It's just a pitfall you learn to deal with as a professional creator, but there's no easy way out of it, not even for those of us who've dealt with it on and off for decades. Typically, when that happens, I go clean, and I cleaned up the mess that is my desk area over the last few days while trying to hen peck at getting chapter...
2025-02-20 10:52:32 +0000 UTC View Post(Author's Note: We're well over halfway through Book 2, but I realized I haven't posted a Cast of Characters for a good long while, and that's on me. So, if you needed a refresher, here's the current Cast of Characters for Quaranteam. As always, don't read this if you're not caught up, as inadvertent spoilers will abound. But many of you who are caught up have been asking for a refresher, s...
2025-02-17 22:55:27 +0000 UTC View PostChapter Thirty-Six
June 24th, 2021
Maya panted heavily, reaching up to wipe sweat off her forehead, her legs still shaking as Andy squeezed his arms around her while she giggled. “I know I’m supposed to be getting used to that, but even almost a year la...
2025-02-17 05:26:46 +0000 UTC View PostAs my way of saying thank you for everyone's patience while I've been getting better, I'm going to do a poll for about the next day or so, on what I should write for Friday, 2/14/22! You have three options to choose from, as pointed out in the newspost from today - the next QT2 chapter, the next Neon Stonehenge chapter or a new Silversmith 2025-02-13 02:01:16 +0000 UTC View Post
Here comes the rain again, falling on my head like a memory, falling on my head like a new emotion...
I'm feeling myself again, which is good, and I'm starting to make progress on getting caught up. I lost a good portion of today editing and proofreading other people's copy, but, on the plus side, I can tell you there's another great QT story coming from another new ...
2025-02-13 01:55:27 +0000 UTC View PostIntermission Seven – Pete/Alex/Louise/Onyx
June 17th, 2021 – Los Angeles, California
“Put some pants on, Louise,” Pete said as he glanced out the window. “They’re here a few minutes early, and the last t...
2025-02-10 20:40:43 +0000 UTC View PostWell, it isn't Walking Pneumonia, thank the heavens.
Friday morning of last week, I woke up with a hacking cough and a sense of complete exhaustion. It wasn't a complete surprise to me - I'd bailed on poker night a few days earlier, and had been trying to get as much sleep as I could to make myself feel better, but that wasn't happening. So I went and saw the doctor, who x-rayed me just ...
2025-02-06 02:47:04 +0000 UTC View PostChapter Five
The next on Tommy’s list to get prepped was Eduardo Sanchez, or as he was more commonly known, Reckless Eddie. And as chaotic as he was, Reckless Eddie was never that hard to track down. If he wasn’t somewhere else, he was usually in Rio De Janeiro.
Reckless Eddie had a legend a couple miles long and was the sort of character known for his wild unpr...
2025-02-06 02:13:09 +0000 UTC View PostThings were actually going well up until yesterday. I'd made progress in some stuff I was working on, I knocked out the QT:Phil's Tale chapter in almost record time for me, and I felt like just maybe I could get caught up. Then this morning I woke up with a super scratchy voice and a throat full of phlegm, so that put a kibosh on the energy. That said, I'm still going to k...
2025-01-30 04:47:51 +0000 UTC View PostChapter Seventeen
Less than two days later, Will was at the Crossroads Diner, the cold winter weather keeping all but the most determined of students out and away for the night, but it was good, because it had let Will spend the time healing up from his duel at the gathering. He hadn’t had ...
2025-01-28 20:32:46 +0000 UTC View PostChapter Sixteen
“Oh what the actual fuck,” Will grumbled beneath his breath, as he glanced over at Silversmith. “Is this guy for real?”
“Capparelli! Do you accept or are you just as much of a...
2025-01-28 20:25:38 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 23
November 18th, 2020
One of the things Phil had learned was completely inescapable in his life was that if Linda had something he needed to do, he’d better get used to the plan that he was just going to have to do it, and the less questions he asked in advance, the better of...
2025-01-27 00:34:34 +0000 UTC View PostPart Seventeen
Harry
“I’m starting to get worried,” Harry said to Stella. “Like, maybe they fell into a time hole level of worried. We should’ve heard back from Rin and Mick by now.”
“If they did, they’ll find their way back,” Stella told him as she stroked his chest in bed, the cool light from the neon outside a contrast to the sniping pitter-pater ...
2025-01-25 02:04:45 +0000 UTC View PostIt's not been a great week, so for those of you who just want to know what's happening (and get angry when I talk my personal life and/or politics), there'll be a Breakpoint chapter up as soon as I can get it finished, and Quaranteam: Phil's Tale for probably Saturday or maybe even Sunday, as I'm going to need a little bit of help in proofing it (espe...
2025-01-23 00:40:03 +0000 UTC View PostYou know, when I talked in Quaranteam about the US invading Canada, it was sort of done as a tongue-in-cheek joke between writers, but the longer both the real world goes and the QT-verse goes, it seems like the joke gets less funny as the potential for it actually happening goes up. If it happens, I'm sorry. That said, I dropped QT2:35 last night bef...
2025-01-16 02:17:07 +0000 UTC View PostChapter Thirty-Five
May 14th, 2021
As happy as he was to have his two daughters delivered safely into the world, Andy wanted nothing so much at that moment as to go home and take a shower. It was late afternoon, and...
2025-01-15 08:38:02 +0000 UTC View PostChapter Seven
July 18th, 2020
Joe had wanted to complain when the text message had sprung to his phone saying that their usual 9 AM morning meeting had been postponed to 3 PM instead, but his frustration quickly dissipated once he realized that meant he could sleep in instead, and so he, Liv, Tori and Clara decided to spend the morning in bed relaxing, enjo...
2025-01-11 06:57:56 +0000 UTC View PostChapter Six
July 17th, 2020
“Good to see you Tims, Tom,” the General said, looking between the various windows of the conference call. He was a man in his early fifties who’d spent much of his career in Pararescue, the special ops division of the Air Force. His hair had gone from red to silver over the last several years, but it was still thick and lu...
2025-01-11 06:55:44 +0000 UTC View PostWhat a goddamn week. I spent the back half of last week fighting off a head cold that I'm still working on, and on Monday, I started a new diet/exercise regiment, because frankly, I haven't cared for the way I've looked in mirrors and photos for a while now. Nothing too extreme - I know how to ramp my body slowly back into shape, and going too hard too fast is an easy way to make me quit, but I...
2025-01-08 21:59:10 +0000 UTC View PostNew Year, New You
(a Jonas Silversmith story)
By Devin McTaggart
December 29th, 2024
I often tell you that many of the tales I’m having you commit to this journal for me have a moral baked into them, but this one might seem especially blunt in its message. Still, nevertheless, a tale has been requested of me, and so a tale I sh...
2025-01-06 10:17:03 +0000 UTC View PostI didn't die in the Midwest. Let's start there.
For the most part, the Christmas holiday was actually generally nice, barring the asshole in the airport who decided he had to be smug to my t-shirt. (I flew back to the Mid wearing a shirt that says 'Make Orwell Fiction Again' and a guy said, 'we won, dipshit! Get over it!' Which... I mean, how do you even respond to that level of idiocy? I...
2025-01-02 00:47:47 +0000 UTC View PostChapter Four
It had mostly been a quiet month or so since he’d brought Kaya to see the Antiquarian, and he’d done his best to make sure nobody knew that he was snooping around, preparing for whenever the next Captain’s Day was, but also making sure he was doing his job, and that he was taking ca...
2024-12-31 22:32:17 +0000 UTC View PostIt's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, everywhere you go.
This, of course, means I'm gearing up for my yearly voyage into the Arctic Circle, aka 'the Midwest.' I spent 5-6 days every year going back to The Old Country, where I will see my remaining living family, celebrate Christmas with them, see my last couple of friends who remained behind in my hometown and then return back to C...
2024-12-18 23:47:01 +0000 UTC View PostChapter Thirteen – “That Kind Of Story”
Dueling is terrible business.
It’s not a skill you can spend that much time polishing. Sure, if you wanted to, you could spend day in and out focusing on combat, but the proble...
2024-12-16 05:20:16 +0000 UTC View PostChapter Twelve – “Some of the Pieces”
The amount of security we brought around the Dark Docks within the next few hours was, let’s be honest, borderline insane, but it was absolutely necessary, considering what we were dealing with. Charlotte had brought in several of her hunters to r...
2024-12-16 05:17:39 +0000 UTC View PostMan, I had such a head of steam on me, and then a DayJob problem sprung up and knocked most of a day out of me. No matter. Ever tried, ever failed. Try again, fail again, fail better. I've just about got next month's Pack off to the commissioner (will do that before I leave tonight) and then we'll see what moods I'm in when I get up tomorrow and start in on writing.
Chapter Sixteen
“Oh what the actual fuck,” Will grumbled beneath his breath, as he glanced over at Silversmith. “Is this guy for real?”
“Capparelli! Do you accept or are you just as much of a...
2024-12-09 22:22:22 +0000 UTC View PostChapter Fifteen
‘What the hell am I doing here?’ Will asked himself, not for the first time since the Spring Gala started, and most likely not the last time before the night would be through. He wasn’t entirely surprised to see most of the people sitting at tables in tribal lines, although it wasn’t as widespread as he thought it might have ...
2024-12-09 22:19:18 +0000 UTC View Post