Category: butter angels

My hopepunky space-opera novelette Bearly Believable is now available at Hexfiled. When the Volpex Picnic Park ranger and his owl companion need a biological android to offer a fire-safety program, it’s gotta be a bear, right? Enjoy!

I wrote a bit about it when it was accepted for publication. I’m really excited that it’s finally coming out! But I wanted to share a few more details of how it fits into the other stories I’ve written about the setting. And some of the other characters that appear in the story.

Bearly Believable is set on Volpex, a planet that was first introduced in The Better Angels and the Very Scary Halloween. That story was originally released in 2022 as a Halloween promotion for the Truck Stop at the Center of the Galaxy and subsequently included in Better Angels: Tour de Force. It’s a terraformed world that has a single developed continent with the rest of the world left fallow to provide ecological services and replicator feedstock harvesting.

I’ve written more about the ecology of terraformed worlds in You Can’t Change Just One Thing that features my characters Totemo Isogashii and the NeoBoxer Lambda. They first appeared in The Better Angels and Lambda and Tau, in Better Angels: Tour de Force, but they also appear in Bearly Believable where they play a small, but crucial role.

In 2023, I wrote a story about a group of girls who run a cooking show on Volpex called The Butter Angels. The humor of them getting mixed up with The Better Angels is played for laughs a time or two, but it was the beginning of several ideas I’ve explored over several stories. The Butter Angels also appear briefly at the beginning of Bearly Believable, so this is their public debut.

The Mayor was just arriving in a SkyStretch with a large police escort. The SkyStretch landed while the police vehicles orbited the site.

When the door opened, a bodyguard exited first, carrying a compact railgun, then the Mayor, and then they were followed by a crowd of young women wearing some kind of costume.

The young women were all matching: cute red tops with long, open sleeves; short, checked skirts; and patterned bandanas to tie back their hair. Plus each had a pink ribbon tied crosswise to hold back their sleeves. They chattered cheerfully among themselves, self-evidently excited to have gotten a ride in the Mayor’s luxurious SkyStretch.

The Mayor led them forward to the ribbon where attendants handed each a pair of scissors. The crowd caught sight of the women and someone yelled, “It’s the Butter Angels!” A huge chorus of shrieks and cheers erupted from the crowd. The Angels offered broad smiles and waved to their fans.

I wrote the original story about the Butter Angels that I had hoped would be published as part of a Truck Stop anthology and, when the publisher proposed doing another Halloween promotion, I wrote a little piece of flash fiction to go along with it. It was around that time that the publisher stopped developing the Truck Stop series and so the stories were never published. I set them aside and turned my attention to other things.

Since it doesn’t appear the Truck Stop is coming back, I’ve started shopping some of these stories around to other outlets. But the Halloween promotion story doesn’t seem like it would ever fit anywhere else, so — since it’s almost Halloween anyway, I’ve posted it separately on my blog: An Anomalous Aggregation of Angels.

I hope you enjoy the stories. I look forward to sharing more stories from Volpex in the coming months and years.

A Better Angel

“Oh, where are they?” Deckman said, pacing back and forth. He was really beginning to sweat. The Better Angels were signed up for a Halloween benefit appearance and they were nearly late. There was already a long line of fans in costume outside the door and all the way down the hall that lead to the Delphian Ballroom in the Blue Sector of the Truck Stop at the Center of the Galaxy. Then he heard loud girlish laughter approaching in the corridor.

Charging out, he quickly clapped his hands and called, “This way, Angels! This way! Everyone’s waiting!” And, without looking, he turned and waved his hand, directing them into the room.

After a moment of consternation, the Butter Angels followed him. The Butter Angels were minor celebrities on Volpex where they did a cooking show. But they were vacationing on the Truck Stop and just happened to be walking by. They found the grand Ballroom organized with velvet ropes and decorated with banners and elaborate backdrops for fans to get a signed photo with their favorite Angel. Deckman turned and did a double-take when he saw the Angels.

“Amazing! Those costumes are simply amazing! I love the aprons!” he said. “You almost look like completely different people!”

He directed them to each stand by one of the backgrounds.

Then he looked around, checked everything over one last time, and finally opened the doors exactly one minute early.

“Welcome, fans! Welcome! Don’t push!”

The first little girl entered, wearing a pink-and-blue Better Angels costume, complete with rainbow ribbons.

“What’s your name?” 

“Madeline,” she whispered, looking down.

“And who do you want to get your picture with?”

“Zaza,” she whispered.

“Where’s Zaza?” Deckman called.

“Did you say Zsazsa?” Zsazsa asked.

“Over there!” Deckman said, pointing.

At that moment, the Better Angels arrived, just in time. They charged in breathlessly, all dressed up wearing their Halloween costumes: Zaza was a perfect Icy Elsa, with Tutu as the Evil Stepmother, and the rest made up as the Seven Androids.

“I’m sorry, girls,” Deckman said, pointing. “You’ll need to go to the end of the line.”

“But…” Zaza said. Then, with a grin, she perceived what had happened.

“C’mon, Androids,” she said. “Let’s wait in line!”

“Beep, beep, boop,” said six of the androids.

“Bebe, beep, boop,” said Bebe.

Madeline got her picture taken with Zsazsa who signed it with a Butter Angels’ catch-phrase, “Keep on cookin’!” Madeline was a little puzzled, but happy enough. And she clutched her picture and the bag of candy she’d received as she headed out.

Other children came and went for two hours until finally it was just Icy Elsa and the Seven Androids left.

“Who would you like your photo with?” Deckman asked.

“Can we get a group photo? With all of us?” Zaza asked.

“I don’t see why not,” Deckman said.

They took the photo, waited for the copies, and then the Butter Angels all signed them together.

“I’m amazed,” Susan said. “We were just here visiting the Truck Stop for a vacation. We had no idea that anyone had set this up. Who knew we were so popular out here?”

“Right?” Zaza asked, with a wink. “What will you do now? Would you like to go trick-or-treating?”

“Oh, that sounds like fun,” Susan said and then added, regretfully. “But I don’t know what we’d wear as costumes.”

“How about Better Angels costumes?” Zaza said. “I know where we could get some.”

“The Better Angels?” Booboo said. “I’ve heard of them!”

During the academic year, my time for pursuing my writing is extremely limited. Almost all of my time is devoted to reading and commenting on student papers. But I do find time for a few things.

I do continue to do several small writing activities. Using the #vss365 prompt on Mastodon, I’ve started writing a story about the Butter Angels: A group of girls who are minor celebrities because they do a cooking show on Volpex and who occasionally get mistaken for the Better Angels.

On Wednesday evenings, I continue to offer Straw Dog Writes. It’s been very successful, with a growing attendance. It’s a fun support group of writers and it’s given me a little time for writing each week that I otherwise wouldn’t have.

I’m hopeful I will be a participant at several upcoming conventions. I have returned the participant survey for Arisia-2024 and have been notified I will receive the survey soon for Boskone-2024. I have also requested to be on the program of Norwescon-2024. I’m also planning to attend Worldcon in Glasgow in summer 2024.

I have joined the volunteer staff for Readercon. I’ve ostensibly joined the “tech team”. But I’m also doing some flyers and other simple graphic design stuff. I’m not really a graphic artist, but I can use vector illustration programs and simple page layouts.

I’m looking forward to the imminent release of Better Angels: Tour de Force. I’m hoping to have copies available for sale in time for the holidays. I’m planning to be at the Holiday Market in the Mill District in North Amherst and the Amherst Farmer’s Market. Books always make great gifts!

And we’re still on track for the release of the Revin’s Heart fix-up with additions and three side-stories in January! Watch for it!