a little scrap of a beginning

Work is quiet, so I’m taking a few minutes to clean up my computer files, and I stumbled across the first few paragraphs of last year’s NaNoWriMo. Life lesson: writing an alien invasion story set in Regency Britain revolving around a black protagonist is a terrible idea when you’re American, white, and have only read a few Jane Austen novels.

It went nowhere. It went nowhere really fast. But I still like how it began. Maybe someday I’ll do something with it again, when I can take the time to do the research and get it right.

It is a truth universally knowledged that the world ended in 1814. Britain had thought Napoleon her greatest threat, but his armies were no match for the alien forces that came to the world. They had weapons that seemed to shoot light; weapons that could dissolve a man within a breath. Great Britain; which had always prided itself on its mighty military and thought itself to be the chosen of God, was forced to its knees by powers beyond mortal comprehension.

As is often the case with these so called “universal truths”, it was not universally acknowledged. In many ways, the New World order looked just like the old world order. The only difference this time was Britain was the one being subjugated, not the one subjugating. In fact, if there is any truth which can be construed as universal, it is this: all colonizing forces are the same. They come; they want; they take; they expect you to be grateful for it.

Phyllis Huntersworth believed in God. She believed in God because of eight years old she saw how the British colonized her home country; and because at 16 years old she saw how the aliens colonized her new home, and they looked no different. Only God could make two species so very different act just the same.

Why is it always the price of butter which suffered? She hurried home from market on the late fall evening. She had gone to get ingredients for her daughter’s fourth birthday dinner, but the cost of butter had risen by almost 15 shillings. Substituting with cream was completely out of the question; she could only hope that milk would do.