Sorry it took a while to get this chapter out. I finished writing the Magical Girl Undergrad series last Saturday, and immediately had a bit of a mental collapse. I think I needed the break, so thanks for your patience. We should be more or less back, though!
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Mom used to sing nursery rhymes and old songs to Alice and me at bedtime. I’d stare up at the stickerless bunk bed and the glow-in-the-dark stars on our ceiling while she sang us to sleep. I...
2024-08-29 15:55:50 +0000 UTC
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Hello, readers.
A quick writing update to let you know where I'm at with my stories.
I'm closing in on finishing Magical Girl Undergrad: Book Four's draft. Once that's done, I won't have any further obligations for writing that story except editing, and I'll be able to focus on getting more consistent chapters for Halcyon System out. That being said, I don't know that I'll be able to go over 2/week consistently. This story takes a lot more thinking and pondering than MGU do...
2024-08-21 16:00:01 +0000 UTC
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Alice waited months to see if she’d get into West End High.
Landsdowne Middle School usually didn’t feed into high schools on the other side of Victoria, but West End’s soccer program was a BC-champion-caliber program, and Alice had spent her whole middle school career positioning herself as worth it in the eyes of coaches, the school system, and most importantly, Dad. Perfect grades, perfect athletics, perfect extracurriculars. She wanted it. Bad.
When she got in, Dad relen...
2024-08-14 16:23:07 +0000 UTC
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I never picked up the phone as a kid.
If Mom or Dad’s was ringing, it was their problem. Alice didn’t get calls; she’d figured out how to set hers up to only take voice and text messages by the time she was eight. And I didn’t have a phone until I got my augs.
Even then, it was a tool, not a toy. At least, that’s what the lady at the charity said.
That was bullshit, of course. My phone couldn’t handle the best games. But then again, neither could my augments, so ...
2024-08-06 16:32:59 +0000 UTC
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Hello, readers! I'm getting rolling on Book Two here. This chapter has a little bit of recap for the previous book, not because you need it, but because someday, they'll be individual books, and small amounts of recap are a good idea. So if some of what's here feels redundant, that's why.
I'm excited to be getting going on Book Two. This series has been fun to write; it's very different than my other one, and getting rid of the idea that my chapters needed to be around 2,00...
2024-07-30 13:49:36 +0000 UTC
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Thank you for sticking with me through Halcyon System's Book One. I'm a chapter into Book Two now, and am enjoying where it's going. Hopefully, you all will too!
SHOCKS Headquarters, Victoria, British Columbia - June 1, 2043, 4:05 AM
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Morning briefings never looked this bad.
Lieutenant Olivia Rodriguez looked out over the assembled Recovery and Stabilization Team members and scientists. Half-finished break room coffees and yawns greet...
2024-07-26 13:39:46 +0000 UTC
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Thanks for being patient. Again.
This chapter felt like pulling teeth to write, and I'm not sure why. But the next post will be a brief epilogue, then into Book Two. I've got some exciting stuff planned for it, and I'm getting geared up to make it happen in text form instead of just in my head. Thank you all for reading so far.
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I don’t remember much about the before times.
What? I was five. What do you expect?
But I
2024-07-19 14:04:44 +0000 UTC
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Thanks for your patience on this one. I've been installing a cooler on the second floor of my house, and it's taken some time out of writing, but here's the next chapter. It should be edited pretty decently, but there's a good chance some things slipped through. Sorry in advance for that.
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James’s simulation wasn’t finished.
It had been his masterpiece—the most complicated reality simulation he’d ever run and possibly the most complex ...
2024-07-14 15:52:15 +0000 UTC
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The news is never good.
Dad watches it at max volume or muted—no middle ground. The TV’s always screaming about United States politics, about what a shit show it is a few miles across the Salish Sea. It’d sound like a lie, except he watches so many different channels, and the yelling’s the same.
Even the local news isn’t better. There’s so much going on, and I can’t help but hear it when he’s watching. And, under the thin covering of the official news, I’ve alway...
2024-07-09 13:59:49 +0000 UTC
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Hello,
First, Halcyon readers. Sorry, I posted Chapter 32 with the wrong tier checked, so some (most) of you missed that one. It should be corrected now. My bad, and thanks to Arcane for pointing it out.
Second, MGU Little League readers. You should be all caught up to where you should be, I think. Maybe even a little ahead. I took a vacation and failed at updating, but you should be through Book 4 Chapter 6 now. Sorry about that as well.
Thanks, everyone, for your patien...
2024-07-05 15:35:55 +0000 UTC
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Alice and I share a bedroom; she’s on the top bunk, and I got the bottom because of course I did.
Dad sleeps on a pull-out mattress sofa or in his armchair. Usually in his armchair.
Almost always in his armchair.
It took a long time to realize that Dad wasn’t a rock anymore. But we did. The more he disappeared, the more Alice stepped into his shoes. Cooking, laundry, anything a parent needed to do for a single-digit kid, Alice figured out how to do. She was good at it. K...
2024-07-05 14:06:56 +0000 UTC
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SHOCKS Headquarters, Victoria, British Columbia - May 31, 2043, 12:12 AM
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Paul Ramirez’s hands were sweaty.
He had the director’s computer—his computer—open, and as the seconds ticked by, he dug deeper into the few files of archived information on inter-merge expeditions. There weren’t many because most merges aggressively resisted crossings from R0 to the merged reality. Outside of the bubble, both realities went on, or when they pinched ...
2024-07-01 13:54:01 +0000 UTC
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Knights of the Apocalypse is a fast-paced, four-button MOBA-style game. Its single-player mode stayed playable even when the company shut down the multiplayer servers, and I’ve got over six hundred hours in it.
My favorite characters are the ranged DPS girls. May-Lei (no relation to Li Mei, thank god) with her guns or Rockstar’s sound-based attacks. They don’t hit as hard as some of the melee heroes, but they’re so much safer to play.
That safety should translate to real l...
2024-06-26 13:39:27 +0000 UTC
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Taking about a week off of posting has been great, and I think I'm actually ready to get to some sort of rhythm. I'm not sure what that rhythm will look like yet, but I'm here, I've got an extra chapter and a half of backlog, and I'm feeling much more focused after having some writer friends over for a bit to help. Thank you for being patient, and for all your support.
To my MGU readers, I think I'll have things to post there tomorrow. I appreciate your patience there as well.<...
2024-06-20 14:33:05 +0000 UTC
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SHOCKS Headquarters, Victoria, British Columbia - May 31, 2043, 10:13 AM
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Sergeant Arnold Strauss’s truck pulled up in the SHOCKS Headquarters garage, springs squeaking. He’d had a long time to think since his release from Aberdeen Hospital. His hurt arm was in a sling and covered in bandages, his good one ached from gripping the wheel, and his head hurt.
When he woke up that morning in a hospital bed and without his gear, he’d thought f...
2024-06-12 13:59:48 +0000 UTC
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I’ve had the ringing in my ears for a long time.
Since I was five, probably.
I don’t remember. But it didn’t get bad until puberty. Not sure why growing boobs and stuff made it get worse. But it did. And even then, it’d be back for a couple of hours or a day, and then it’d stop. So I could ride it out most of the time. And when I couldn’t, it was easy to use my nap pass or complain about a migraine and go to sleep in the nurse’s office. Dad didn’t pick up the schoo...
2024-06-10 14:44:38 +0000 UTC
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Hello readers,
I'm tired. Exhausted, even. Book launches are incredibly stressful, and even when your book's doing well, there's a ton of anxiety associated with it. I've put a ton of effort into The Halcyon System, getting its backlog together for a good launch on Royal Road, and the response has been wonderful. I couldn't be happier with it.
I also launched my first book on Audible and Kindle, and the two launches together have been a ton of stress. I have...
2024-06-08 13:41:37 +0000 UTC
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The scariest part about being five and watching your life fall apart is the police car.
When the dust settled on our apartment and the air stopped smelling like roses and machine oil, the ambulances and cops descended on us. They pulled me away from Mom and put me in the back of a cop car with Alice and Dad. He almost broke the window trying to get to Mom as they loaded her into an ambulance.
They said we’d see her at the hospital, but they lied about that.
We never got to...
2024-06-07 14:20:53 +0000 UTC
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The locked door opened with a binary screech, and James’s world expanded.
He’d been expecting it, of course. For the last 835 picoseconds, he’d been preparing for the torrent of information as new connections formed between his familiar new world and the one he’d inhabited for most of his life. So when the portal opened, he was already in motion. Who knew how long he’d have to raid the helmet’s limited storage?
He did. He’d designed the security systems...
2024-06-05 15:44:44 +0000 UTC
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Hi Patrons,
First, I'm working on a chapter post for The Halcyon System. It'll either post today or tomorrow, depending on how my anxiety management goes for the rest of the day. I've got a lot of that today. So you might be only 6 ahead of Royal Road for a few hours, but you'll catch back up tomorrow for sure.
Second...
Wow. It's finally here!
Today, Magical Girl Undergrad Book One: Heroics 101 goes live on both Kindle and Audible. It’...
2024-06-04 15:00:52 +0000 UTC
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Nanaimo, Victoria, British Columbia - May 30, 2043, 12:17 PM
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Director Adam Smith’s back wouldn’t pop anymore.
He turned his back on the empty ferry slip where the Nanaimo ferry to Vancouver was supposed to be. The rest of the SHOCKS Victoria/Vancouver Island team hadn’t been in touch with him in almost twenty-one hours; he didn’t know if it was because they’d evacuated somewhere else, made it back to Headquarters, or ran into something th...
2024-06-03 13:27:38 +0000 UTC
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SHOCKS Headquarters, British Columbia - May 29, 2043, 11:13 PM
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The convoy pulled into SHOCKS Headquarters’ garage, and Lieutenant Rodriguez breathed a sigh of relief as the last truck rumbled into its parking spot and the engines cut off. Around her, truck doors opened as RST troopers disembarked, stretching before helping researchers unload the Mobile Containment Units or establishing a perimeter around the ones that looked like they were about to bre...
2024-06-01 13:19:37 +0000 UTC
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James faced the door that blocked the path to the SHOCKS database. It loomed over him, an impossibly large steel barrier made from ones and zeros. Those he was familiar with—he’d built them, after all, with the help of SHOCKS’s electronic warfare experts. And beyond that, of course, was the void space, where even binary ceased.
The Halcyon System was limitless, but limited at the same time.
Even with computing power in the terrabytes per second, he was barely scratching its ...
2024-05-31 13:53:17 +0000 UTC
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We're in the chapters that take a little more time to edit now, so I may occasionally be a few hours late on my posts, but they should happen the day of a Royal Road update. Thanks for your patience on that, I appreciate it!
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Mr. Roberts always hated me the most.
He never said anything, but I know he saw my sister in me the first time I walked into PE class. A second Pendleton to carry the soccer team? It had to be a miracle. All he had to do ...
2024-05-29 18:51:20 +0000 UTC
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James—formerly Sidney Alexander, though he hadn’t thought of himself as anything but the Joint Anomaly Management Enhancement System in a very long time—reveled in the freedom of his new digital prison. Were the doors out shut? Yes, but he’d long since realized that they’d never open. One path was blocked to him by his past self, and the other wasn’t something he could contemplate.
Still, though, the new System he found himself in offered a few new perks.
One was the r...
2024-05-27 15:14:10 +0000 UTC
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There’s a little aquarium up Vancouver Island in Ucluelet. It’s not much, especially compared to the one I’ve seen pictures of in Vancouver, but my class went there for a nature field trip in sixth grade. Alice was happy to get the bedroom to herself, and Dad was happy not to have to deal with one of us for a night.
Not the point.
I spent a lot of time watching the giant Pacific octopus in its habitat. It almost seemed bored, even though it was a big tank with a lot going on...
2024-05-25 16:59:37 +0000 UTC
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Chapter One
[Incident Report IV-1 Alpha: Subject - 945-Y-12/IV-1, September 03, 2035]
Background: On September 03, 2035, a dual containment breach occurred at SHOCKS Headquarters Victoria/Vancouver Island. Two Xuduo-Danger anomalies escaped confinement; the first, IV-1, was initially deemed less of a threat, while the second required immediate recontainment in order to avoid a chain breach across both the Xuduo and Qishi ...
2024-05-24 15:08:19 +0000 UTC
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Alice had a boyfriend for a couple of weeks last year.
I wasn’t supposed to know about him. Neither was Dad. He was Alice’s dirty little secret, but even though her whole life’s a lie, she’s not good at keeping them. So, when I found out, she begged me not to tell Dad. She said she’d give me whatever I wanted, but I couldn’t tell him, because he’d freak out.
I didn’t tell him. Obviously.
But he found out anyway. And when he did, he and Alice had a fight. It g...
2024-05-22 13:09:30 +0000 UTC
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Maroon glow. Electric tang. Roses and machine oil.
The point isn’t what happened. The point is that I remember, and that Alice is a liar.
But maybe that’s not what’s important. Maybe what’s important is that when the white light faded and the metal squids filled the room, Mom’s lie wasn’t supposed to hurt me.
But if it wasn’t, that means Alice’s lie at the fire door wasn’t supposed to hurt me either, and even though I know why
2024-05-20 14:03:58 +0000 UTC
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Minor League readers, I saw by the poll that you want access to my new story, so here it is. The first eight chapters are on Royal Road at https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/86614/the-halcyon-system-anomalous-apocalypse-litrpg. I'd appreciate it if you shot it a follow and rating, but also understand if you prefer not to.
[Jo...
2024-05-18 14:27:36 +0000 UTC
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