Now or Thereabouts (short story)

Now or Thereabouts
Main character(s):	Ceol
Main setting:	London, 2010s Klasterhaus Eleven-Day Empire
Key crew
Writer:	Blair Bidmead
Release details
Part of:	A Romance in Twelve Parts
Release date:	31 May 2011
Faction Paradox
← Previous	Mightier Than the Sword
Next →	Nothing Lasts Forever

Now or Thereabouts was a 2011 short story written by Blair Bidmead and released in the Faction Paradox series anthology A Romance in Twelve Parts.

Summary

Competing in a tense game-show-style "media ritual", Little Sister Ceol seeks to become the chosen candidate initiated into the Faction and avoid the terrible fate that awaits those who fail, all the while being haunted by the Priest with the exploding glass face.

Plot

to be added

Characters

• Little Sister Ceol
• Godfather Starch
• Father Heed
• Mother Anamnesis
• Little Brother Gull
• Little Sister Penelope
• Little Brother Fleece
• Little Brother Dominic
• Maria
• Ryan
• The war veteran
• The drunk man
• The singing man

Worldbuilding

• The herdsmen of Klasterhaus live in the Great Prairie.

Notes

• Blair Bidmead, as well as all the other contributors to the anthology, penned one of the hundred drabbles which made up the final story A Hundred Words from a Civil War. His story reused the characters of Ceol, now Lady President of the City of the Saved, and Dominic.
• The characters of Ceol and Maria were intended to be Kelsey Hooper and Maria Jackson respectively, however, due to copyright Bidmead couldn't outright state this. Ceol's full name Sojourner Hooper-Agogô referenced Kelsey's surname.
• Ceol had previously debuted in Bidmead's 2009 The Panda Book of Horror anthology story Party Kill Accelerator!. The character would go on to make small appearances in the earlier mentioned A Hundred Words from a Civil War and the short story Sojourner & Ellie, with a much larger role in the novel Weapons Grade Snake Oil.
• The tenants that Ceol and Dominic evict from the Eleven-Day Empire previously appeared in Bidmead's unlicensed story With All Awry from Myth Makers: The Golden Years, later republished on his blog. In that story, each of the tenants were explicitly stated to be different versions of the Doctor's ninth incarnation: the seated war veteran was the Eighth Doctor; the drunk man was Richard E Grant's "Shalka" Doctor; and the singing man in the bathtub was the Ninth Doctor.

Continuity

to be added

External links

• The text of With All Awry on Blair Bidmead's blog

• Now or Thereabouts at the Faction Paradox wiki