Tea served in mourning garb? Who has died? None of the men of Dee had Golden attitudes. They admired her, but not as she desired. She was a trophy. A status symbol. They paid lip service to Okal Lumens, the path of light, but they did not feel the need for goodness and beauty. Not like Dela. On the days when Dela pined for court, only Lady Ril's faith made life bearable. Dela went back into the study to look for Ril now, but she was not there. Instead, Dela gravitated toward

You must not go out. When she felt better, Dela ate a few cunningly made sweets from a dish that was always full, and decided she would take a walk. But when she called for a servant to fetch her walking shoes, she was met by a man in house uniform wearing a formal dueling sword. "Princess-liege," he said, "you can’t go out." Dela blinked at him. "Why ever not?" He was one of Ril's grandchildren, a large, honest man, who had bred down in his choice of wife. They had lost th

Dela lives in a world of Golden stories. The Family of Light were essential to her. They were greater than her. Even if not currently enfleshed, they could still be relied upon. Dela sought them in her withdrawing room, where they could always be found in her books of plays and poems, and visualized in the reproductions of court portraits which lined the walls. The withdrawing room was the one place where Dela could worship greater powers of good, instead of representing them

A stranger is coming to Dee Manor. Princess Dela tightened plumb hands on her book of verse as she stared out of the irregularly cut panes of the great, decorative window that looked out onto the courtyard of Dee Manor. The road beyond was paved in expertly fitted stones and lined in little yellow and blue flowers. So familiar, and yet suddenly ominous. "I don't understand," Dela said to her inferior friend, Lady Ril, and shifted her grip on her book of verse, squeezing and s

#okalrel novella The Lorel Experiment covers the start of Self-Evolved Limited, the company whose products became known as Sevolites (homo sevolite). The logo shown here was an early effort in Photoshop, probably in the 1990s . Self-Evolved Limited was founded by Damien Lorel, the child of the founding philanthropists behind the "uplift" effort covered in the Lorel Experiment. Backlash by anti-Sevolite terrorists turned Damien into a canny operator projecting a reassuring fro

If I was incubating the Okal Rel Saga today, it would feature heroes overcoming the tragedy of the commons: CO2 emissions, plastic pollution, and the general using-up of the irreplaceable on the trivial or transitory. In the 70s, as a teenager, nuclear war was the existential threat and women's liberation the social challenge. Hence the "How not to destroy the world once you can " theme: Sevolites fight with swords to avoid planet-killing warfare and Reetions reply on their b

Court Sevolites of the Okal Rel Saga era are either in awe of or highly suspicious of Lorels. There is a Brown Hearth, reserved for their use, but it is held in trust by Green Hearth (House Monitum). Lorels haven't visited court since they were expelled (1) in a anti-science pogrom a couple centuries before. Art by Amy Midsomer for the cover of The Lorel Experiment on Wattpad. Lorels were actually the first Sevolites, originating (1) in the near future of Earth 50-100 years f

This is what a relship "looks like" coming towards you. You'd see it on your ship's telemetry provided you are also reality skimming. It can't be observed from a non-skimming platform like a station or planet. Sevildom used nervecloth tech to render spacescapes under skim. Reetions use a variety of solutions which may or may not translate to an analogy display. The inspiration for approaching ships being blue (and receding ones being red) is, of course, red-shift. But this is

The phases of creation for the Okal Rel Universe (ORU) are: Childhood (? to c. 1964). My sister, Holly, was my most important and enduring playmate, dating back as far as I can remember, although neighborhood friends took part as well. Stories played out over multiple sessions or even years. Not ORU exactly, but adventure-based, heroic tales. Role play (c. 1964 - 1976). Barbie dolls featured. Also live role play and early "word gaming" with best-friend Kathy Perrault. This in

"Reality skimming" has multiple meanings in the context of realityskimming.com Originally, of course, it is the name for the faster-than-light mode of space travel in a #spaceship that underpins the #scifi setting of the Okal Rel Universe (ORU). It became the name of the small press I ran for a few years after buying out my IP rights from Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy. Since then it's become a metaphor for the way I engage the world as a writer. The manifestations of this