The Writer’s Mind is a wondrous thing.
Or a royal pain in the, uh, neck, about half the time.

Mine, currently, has fallen in madly in lust with the theme of “Good People in a Horrible Place (Multi-Parallel-World brutal society, in my case) find ways to do the right thing and help others.”

I think it’s done. Over. Getting repetitive.

Yeah, the Muse, the back brain, the subconscious . . . whatever you want to call it . . . is winning.

“Oh, let’s do it this way, this time!”

“Let’s go back a century and see how it got this bad!”

“Oh, you think the culture’s caput? Hahahahah, let’s show all the death throes!”

“No, it’s done! I’m . . . I’m . . . going to write a totally stupid, insipid romance!”
“Yes, yes! Falling in love as the Multiverse burns! Bwahahahahaha!!!”

Well . . . I think it’s an improvement on yesterday’s total blank “words not happening” where I looked at this years two novels, four shorts and said. “Good enough, take the rest of the year off.”

Maybe.


Chapter One
Spiked Punch
Tuesday, January 7, 3712


“. . . and Tamila Sorokin had her wedding in Iceland! With auroras in the sky! How am I going to beat that!”
With something even more expensive, harder to find and ridiculous? Natali Morozov looked over her shoulder and held out a hand. An attentive maid handed her a glass of fizzy(and well spiked) punch. I will be an alcoholic by the time Akulina is married to that dashingly handsome, filthy rich scion of a head of Family with even less common sense and brain power than the admittedly beautiful, graceful, well trained daughter of yet another Head of Family.
My stepsister, as of two years ago. So I can’t find a convenient excuse to not be a bridesmaid.
She looked out the twelfth story windows of the Konstantinopol. Akulina’s father had rented the entire restaurant for the night, for his daughter’s engagement party. The view of the lights of Nova Moskva, the capital of the Three Part Alliance, was spectacular.
And while my accumulating collection of in-laws and stepwhatevers are all well up in the low numbers and filthy rich for the most part . . . they’re all an order of magnitude less filthy rich than the fathers of the bride and the groom.
How the Hell my widowed stepmother managed to bag a Head of Family at all, let alone Lord Ippolit Kovalchuk the fifth richest man in the Troystvennyy Soyuz . . . And what’s harder to understand is that she actually wanted to.
Now, the ancient 2 Kovalchuk wanting to marry his youngest daughter to the youngest son of his old buddy, 2 Yakovlev isn’t actually surprising.
And with that much money, going completely overboard on a simple party . . .
Natali shot a glance across the room, where the men had clustered. Dinner conversation in the mixed group had been interesting . . .
And me, here in a cluster of idiot women.
So here’s me, here and now, stuck as a bridesmaid to insanity.
Natali blinked at the empty glass in her hand. Handed it off to a waitress and didn’t take another. “I’d better stop drinking before I say something insane like, ‘Can’t Daddy buy you your own World for a dowry, with a spectacular mountain range for the wedding backdrop?’”
Beside her, Izolda Chaban’s mouth dropped open. “Brilliant! Akky! Your father should buy you . . .”
“Oh god, no!” Natali dropped her head into her hands. But Izolda’s well trained voice projected over the whole crowd. Even tackling her bodily would only postpone the inevitable.
“. . . your own World, with a Spectacular Mountain Range for the backdrop of The Wedding!”


I can only wonder what disaster will strike.
Will the spectacular mountain erupt?
Perhaps a stampede of elephants or dinosaurs through and over the wedding?
An invasion by Space Aliens would be something new . . .

But no doubt Natali will fall madly in love with the Best Man. Or a Space Alien, what the heck . . .