Haunted

I'm think I'm going to cry...

I cut my ties with ViS. Deleted the story queue for DoJ. Tucked it away for another time.

My dreams will be haunted by a tan Cali boy with ice blue eyes.








Lady Glamis, you say you can focus on one story, one set of characters at a time. How do you do that? How do you let all the other stories go? I feel like I've stabbed a child.

Character Interview: Lord Alope

Character interviews seem to be in vogue this season. I've decided to vary the norm, since my MC is so busy I've invited a minor POV character to come have a chat with us.

Live! From Port Kara, Cannes, Fidelies System- 2763 AD Lord Alope!

*much cheering of the audience*

Lord Alope is the Capital Alpha of House Alope. He has recently celebrated his 106th birthday and is happily married to Lady Alope for the past 79 years. He currently works in the Ministry of Honor handling cases for the lesser Houses and dealing with off-planet visitors. Lord Alope shifts into a red fox and is what we would call a true bimorph.

*Lord Alope walks in looking dapper in a well tailored black suit, neatly combed silver hair, and blue eyes*

Me: Lord Alope, welcome to the 21st century. We're glad to have you on the blog.

Alope: *looks around, dubious* Thank you... I think.

Me: *big smile* So, Lord Alope, we're all dying to know: Do you have a first name?

Alope: That's a very personal question.

Me: I could go hack a database if you prefer.

Alope: And I could have you killed. Why not just let the question drop?

Me: Right, no personal questions then?

Alope: If you'd be so agreeable, Miss Brooks. Some things are best left... undiscussed.

Me: Of course. So, no questions on your family.

Alope: Precisely.

Me: Well! *crosses off several questions* Lord Alope, what can you tell us about the current situation on Cannes?

Alope: In 2008? Cannes hasn't even been terraformed yet. I imagine it's rather cold and unexciting.

Me: *purses lips* I meant in your time.

Alope: *small smile* Of course. Currently the situation is strained.

Me: Perhaps, for the sake of brevity, you could cut the political jargon. Just for a little bit? Please?

Alope: *clears throat* The situation on Cannes is very bad. The problem with any isolated population, over several generations, is that the recessive genes come to the fore. Breeding within the powerful Houses results in betas, we need alphas. But to breed alphas, and what you call true bimorphs, we need fresh blood.

Me: Preferably alive and breedable?

Alope: Yes. But to allow an outsider into a great House is, unthinkable. It would defy centuries, millennias, of tradition.

Me: But, as I understand it, the House of Dare is pushing for breeding with non-Were nobility, is that correct.

Alope: Lord Dare, a man I hold in high regard, has suggested something unprecedented. Whether it will work or not is beyond my limited skill to discern.

Me: Fascinating. Lord Alope, would you humor our readers by answering a few of their questions?

Alope: I'd be delighted, Miss Brooks.

Me: This question is from Amy, in Australia: What does House Alope hope to gain from playing the middle in the silent war between House of Dare and House of Gael.

Alope: Very simple, we intend to survive. That is all we ever need.

Me: A follow on question, if I may, what are you hoping to avoid. Extinction isn't a possibility, is it?

Alope: Extinction, no. But loss of power, loss of prestige.

Me: Are you willing to sacrifice something, let's say your family or your personal honor since those are dear to you, to accomplish survival.

Alope: My own honor, yes. If my name must be tarnished to defend my family, so be it. My family is sacrosanct. I will kill every breathing creature in the known universe to defend them, if I must.

Me: Let's hope it doesn't come to that.

Alope: Indeed.

Me: One more question before we break, this one from Tracy in Alabama: What do you feel is your defining quality? Is it your ethics, your honor, something else? What, morally, makes you you?

Alope: May I ask if you are familiar with the idea of making storms in a stew pot?

Me: Yes.

Alope: That, I feel, is me. Within my sphere of influence, where I have control, I try to change the world. I am, to the core, an alpha male. I must defend what is mine, until my soul is shattered and lost if that is the cost. I must protect those I love. I must control the world around me, or I will go mad. It is not a matter of wishing to, or hoping to, it is a need, like breathing.

Me: And this, you think, defines you morally?

Alope: What is morality but a way of saying what you will not do? Miss Brooks, there is nothing I will not do to protect those who depend on me. Be they family or ally, there is no line I will not cross for them.

Me: *slightly frightened* Thank you, Lord Alope, for stopping by. I wish you the best of luck with everything. I think I'll just get back to my editing now....

Origins

Do you ever have an idea you love but that you can't make work?

I did.

Right after my first daughter was born, still in college and still fairly newly-wed, I created a character for my daughter. The character had my child's dark black/red hair and a fiery temperament. The world was typical fantasy, small divided kingdoms who still dream of some long distant "Golden Age".

The MC, Sari (Sah- r- eye) Justice, was fantastic. I loved her moodiness. I loved that she was isolated (something I felt keenly as the only married person in my department and the only undergrad besides DH raising a child). I loved that she wanted to do it all alone and couldn't. Her counterpart was Jarrent Icehawk (how's that for a fantasy name?) and his primary motivation in life seemed to be saving Sari.

Basically, the story was awful. Beyond awful. Beyond cliched even. But I liked some of the elements.

1) I liked an MC who's entire goal was doing the right thing because it was right and didn't really care about the people involved.

2) I liked the theme of rebuilding. Sari Justice kicked off a world where the Golden Age was going to be remade.

3) I liked the idea behind the House of Justice, a group of people who would declare anyone family because they had similar traits.

4) I liked making the MC have to grow beyond their self-centered ideals and learn to work and care for other people.

The rest I wound up scrapping after the first chapter because I realized the plot hinged on Jarrent chasing and trying to win Sari. It was a very sappy, G-rated, romance and I didn't like it at all. If I couldn't enjoy thinking about the plot why bother writing the book?

Several years later, degree in hand (sum laude thank you very much - it's not so easy with a kid in hand), I had another idea bubbling but no backbone. I had a world of humans who lived underwater and rode on sharks. I'm obsessed with sharks. I adore sharks. I've been bitten by a shark (and a moray eel but that's another story) and... yes... I wanted a story with sharks.

So I pulled the ideas from the scrapped fantasy and twisted things until I found something that worked.

- I took my shark-rider idea and added genetic manipulation and 800 years to get the Finn Nation, human-shark hybrids with space ships.

- I took my justice seeking MC with a temper like a wounded tiger and created Ice Rus, a detective seeking justice who happens to be a wounded tiger on occasion.

- I took the idea of an adoption happy House and made them an adoption happy Nation with the technology to raise children without a biological uterus (an idea also used by Louis McMaster Bujold and several sci-fi short stories)/

- I took a brooding stand-alone-don't-touch-me MC and turned that into a MC who doesn't quite know how to fit in but tries. And I gave the poor boy Maggie Finn to contend with which just goes to show how mean I am (if you haven't met Maggie yet, you will, and then you'll understand how evil I can be)

- I took the theme of healing a fractured nation and retooled it to be rebuilding interstellar relations between a fractured humanity. Which I think is more interesting.

Old stories have their purpose. You can scrap the DL and use the themes for what you need. I have several other stories with ideas, themes, or characters I like that I just can't find the right application for them. They are there. Eventually I'll figure out where to fit everything and how to express myself properly. But, for now, I'm happy with what I'm getting out of this scrap. I think it's showing promise. I think there's a future here for these characters.

And maybe I'll eventually get a character named Sari worked into another story.

Grandma Dusty and Grieving

Grandma Dusty......... In the land fiction and fancy Rachael "Dusty" Bryson is a physicist, former member of a NASA think tank, and the Commander of an interstellar black-ops fleet with ships named with a religious theme: Pious, Integrity, Faith, Wisdom, Knowledge, Esteem, Irreverent, Glorious, Redemption, and Ruby (a cookie to anyone who knows the virtue reference there). Her grand-nephew, MC John Bryson in Bryson Anomaly, inherits her house, her car, and her ship when she dies.

In real life Grandma Dusty (a nickname she picked up after falling off her horse) died Friday of complications from lung cancer. She was 75. The real Grandma Dusty was a hero too. She was born in San Diego, California, and married a sailor from New York. She's lived in most the coastal areas in the US and in Guam. She raised her family in Hawaii before it was a state. She buried her only son was he was 19.

Her only daughter (also born in San Diego) married a man also from New York and settled on a small farm to raise three children. The youngest is my husband.

I know being a military spouse is hard. Grandma Dusty was one during the Cold War before there were things like the Internet and cartoons to keep kids busy. She was born in 1933 and survived all the wars that came after. She was cheerful and giving. Her favorite activity was watching birds on her back porch and talking with her grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

In the book Grandma Dusty's sudden death pushes John to consider accepting alien invasion as a way to prevent future deaths from cancer and disease.

In real life Grandma Dusty survived the first wave of cancer but relapsed after a year. A stroke affected her memory and her will to keep fighting.

In the book Grandma Dusty survives. Her death was fraudulent and she's found in a prison camp behind enemy lines.

In real life Grandma Dusty is being laid to rest today in the graveyard on Ridge Road, next to her son. Her husband and daughter will have to say good-bye and go to whatever comfort and solace their faith can give them.

In the book there's a happy ending.

In real life.... it depends on your point of view. Either we all have a terrible ending or death is a small step on an eternal journey. Regardless, Grandma Dusty will be missed while she's away from us.

There's Something About Cyborgs....

Full credit to Bill Watterson of Calvin and Hobbes fame for the picture

I'm working on a steampunk/sci-fi noir piece. The whole idea is Tracer Bullet and Dick Tracy meet space ships. I love it. The character line up is my dream team of players, but I have a minor character who is starting to steal the spotlight.

I wish I could draw, I'd love to have a picture of him, but I can't. So let me describe him....

Evans was a rookie cop when he got involved with a bust gone bad and his skin was peeled off his body. They fixed him up with a titanium shell and sent him back to work. Sixty years later (people live longer in the far future) he's the chief of police on the bad side of town. He's blunt, concise, and taciturn. He makes Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice look positvely chatty.

For the first few books I have plotted out the main character (Harlowe) gets pulled out of early retirement and sent to hunt down a series of improbable killers. The first is a serial killer who vanished for 22 years. The next is someone who sends creepy letters detailing murders throughout the first book, and then starts killing. I haven't plotted it out much past that but I know, at some point, Harlowe gets captured and his erstwhile partner rushes to the rescue.

Harlowe's partner is Kassi Troy. Former princess, priestess, and victim of every atrocity of war. She's a little bit bitter and she tends to keep people at arms length. She's very independent. She volunteers with the force because she's bored, not because she wants to do good or save the world.

And my cyborg is in love with her.

This came as a bit of a surprise when I was working up the outlines. Evans stepped in and said he was going to go with Kassi. It turns out he's been mooning over her since their first intro but had been to shy to mention it to me. But when I went writing Kassi into trouble he stepped in.

What to do with a cyborg in love.... and why cyborgs of all the good creatures in sci-fi?

The fascination with cyborgs isn't all that new. They show up in a lot of fiction and they're wonderful because they represent something very familiar to the modern audience in a new way.

Cyborgs are the outcast. Cyborgs are almost human. Almost like all of us.... but not quite.

I have one cyborg character who was turned after an accident crushed his legs. His fiancee rejected him and he wound up back at war. Evans had his skin ripped off, he doesn't look human but inside he is very human romantic.

Despite the hard metal exterior and the bristling weapons array cyborgs, like their fantasy equivalent zombies, are beautiful creatures. They deserve some love and respect. Go on! Go create a cyborg and see how much fun they are!

I'm off to work on Harlowe and Evans first adventure (or misadventure - they're a cynical pair). :o)