For those of you who haven’t been following along, I am doing this because my up-coming novel Nora and the Werewolf Wedding features a character inspired by Deanna Troi from the Next Generation series. Deanna as an empath had a lot of power in that series, she brought to light that even the Captain of a starship sometimes needs some guidance navigating emotional waters, and the importance of confronting those emotions.
I wanted to make a story where an empath was the centerpiece instead of on the sidelines, and I fear Star Trek First Contact reinforced that desire in me. Unlike Star Trek Generations, where Deanna had a lovely scene with the Captain discussing mortality, in this next movie she is more of a backdrop character. We see she is there. She has a small scene with a drunk character where Riker is highly amused to see her in an equally drunken state, but otherwise she has nothing to do.
It is a little sad because there were a couple of opportunities in there where she might have been able to shine, but for pacing/storytelling purposes it seems she got the back seat in this one. That said, having Picard apart from Deanna, who might have been able to confront him sooner about his behavior, left some space open for Picard to have a bit of a tantrum. He got to go a little crazy precisely because Deanna wasn’t there to check him, so I can see why it was done.
I still think Deanna could have been given more opportunity to shine down on the planet’s surface with the rest of the crew and all of the stuff going on down there, but, hey, such is life. I still enjoyed the movie and the Borg Queen Lady is still creepy enough to make me squirm.
My upcoming novel Nora and the Werewolf Wedding was partially inspired by the character of Deanna Troi in Star Trek the Next Generation. Now, if you think it’s strange that a science fiction character could inspire a series of urban fantasy novels… Well, you’re probably right, but I never claimed to be normal. And really, we have my mother to blame here because she was the Star Trek fan.
I fondly remember weekends with Star Trek marathons when my mother unfolded that super-heavy and not-quite-comfortable sofa bed so that we could all camp out in the living room. She was a single mom for the majority of my childhood, so she was asleep by 10PM, but it was fun watching her pretend like she could stay awake long enough to get the full experience.
So it makes sense that an impressionable young woman like me would become captivated by a television show where a woman sat on the bridge of a starship. But Deanna Troi was not just “a woman sitting on the bridge” either. We got to see a lot of women strutting their strengths in the movies and tv shows when I was growing up, such as Ripley (Aliens), Sarah Conner (Terminator), and Princess Leia (Star Wars).
Deanna Troi stands out because her strengths are gentleness, intelligence, and empathy.
I know that there are some conversations about her costumes on the show, but I don’t want to get into that debate. We’ve all heard it before. Suffice to say, she had a major role to play in keeping tabs on the emotions of a wide variety of races living inside that fragile spaceship. So while I’m rewatching these movies – and yes, I chose the movies instead of the actual show because of time constraints, but I’ll obviously be rewatching the show as well – I am paying particular attention to Deanna.
With that in mind, let’s dive in!
Star Trek Generations Plot Blurb from IMDb: With the help of long presumed dead Captain Kirk, Captain Picard must stop a deranged scientist willing to murder on a planetary scale in order to enter a space matrix.
First observation, I forgot Malcolm McDowell was in this movie. He has a captivating voice and makes for a fun villain, even if not the cleverest scientist. Knowing what he does about the matrix and all of its strange time travel, you would think he could have anticipated resistance from Picard and Kirk.
Now, on to Deanna’s role.
Troi’s involvement at the very beginning was quite satisfying. Being the empath that she is, she’s the one who knows immediately that her Captain has been given bad news. SPOILER ALERT – His brother and nephew have died and the grief that brings to the table forces him to confront his own mortality. However, she also senses that he needs some time to grapple with the shock on his own, so it is several scenes later before she walks herself into his room to ask him if she can help.
The scene is quite lovely and while they are interrupted by PLOT happenings, it is a nice reminder that she has a true position and job to do on this ship. Her captain was in distress and she met that distress. When he tries to brush off the deaths as, “It’s alright, these things happen.” She confronts him – gently – by saying that no, it is not alright.
We as a society often believe that grieving is a weakness of some kind, but it isn’t. Grief is a part of life. It’s one more thing that reminds us we are human and alive, and while it is painful it shouldn’t be ignored. Deanna’s presence at that moment in the storyline highlights that it is not only okay to grieve, but necessary. Even for the captain of a starship.
The rest of the movie has Deanna doing starship things. She takes the helm when the helmsman gets injured during the space battle and is understandably busy while the ship (SPOILER ALERT) goes down. The one thing I do wish the movie had more time to explore was Data and his emotion chip. Deanna was an obvious choice for him to go to while wrestling with human emotions for the first time, but I suspect the pacing of the movie would have been dramatically hindered by adding such a scene.
All in all, I deeply enjoyed this rewatch. William Shatner’s Kirk was a delight from start to finish, and while there were a couple of things that made me squint – such as Klingons bothering to take Picard prisoner only to throw him right down where he wanted to be instead of, you know, holding him prisoner as a bargaining chip, and the aforementioned shortsightedness of the villain – I am enough of a fan of the characters themselves to brush these off.
I’m not certain who first coined the phrase that writers must “kill their darlings” but I find myself staring down the barrel of my proverbial gun today. With my shelter book finally completed – yes, that only took me all of COVID and then some to finish – I am on to the next project!
Or, projects, really.
For the entire month of May I have opted to work on Story Bibles, Outlines, and World Building for the Werewolf Wedding novel and Tango Five, the third installment of the Tapped Series.
For my dear, lovely readers who have showered me with their love of Enemy Souls, I thank you. And I am deeply grateful that the book delivered a satisfactory story! This was the second installment of the Tapped Series and I am excited to be working in the science fiction realm again, preparing for the third novel. And, as I often do, I have begun reading the series from the first book onward, taking notes to reference technology and character development.
I do already have a vague story bible written in respects to the Tapped series, but I have found that nothing prepares me better for writing the next book, than reading the ones that came before. I’m not sure how other authors who work with series of novels handle this portion of the process, but this is what works for me. Even if I do cringe sometimes, recognizing that I have learned so much more about the craft of writing since the first book was published.
So where does Killing Darlings come into all this?
Well, for the Werewolf Wedding novel, if you must know. For fans who have been following along this whole time – by the way, I love you all and I hope you keep reading and adventuring and reading some more – you will remember a novel by the title Melody of Bones. Also known as my dragon novel.
After a great deal of debate, I have decided to kill this novel. It is, in fact, a little darling.
A two-plus-year darling that I have nursed and attempted to sell and simply gotten no where with. But the really cool elements of the novel fit perfectly into the story I am telling with Nora Grayson, and I know that both stories will be told better by doing a Dr. Frankenstein move and piecing them together.
Does it hurt?
Yes.
Egads, yes.
I love Prudence Alturas and her tragic tale as an exiled dragon.
But if I do this right, I’ll get to tell her story better than my first attempt.
So here is me, pulling the official trigger and killing off a darling. I hope to have a new draft completed by the end of July, with several more novels waiting to step up to the plate.
For my fellow authors out there, I hate to say it but… they saying is right. Sometimes we really do have to kill our darlings.
From Achilles to Captain America, Perseus to Luke Skywalker, our stories have been saturated with soldier heroes. We play them in our video games, we read them in science fiction; super soldiers who have the strength to fight when others fall behind.
AVAILABLE September 8, 2020
We love them because they fill us with hope.
And because they can do really cool things on the screen or on the page.
When I set out to write the Tapped universe, I was researching pressure points and Chinese legends about chi. For those unfamiliar with the term, chi is defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as: vital energy that is held to animate the body internally and is of central importance in some Eastern systems of medical treatment (such as acupuncture) and of exercise or self-defense (such as tai chi).
But that dictionary doesn’t bring out the cool stuff.
The cool stuff, are legends of people having such mastery over their chi that they could perform kata’s (martial movements meant to practice control of the body) while balancing on top of, and not breaking, delicate teacups.
Think Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.
Now we hit the pressure points – these are specific spots on the body that, when manipulated in a specific manner, can bring about significant pain or other effects. Like the Vulcan neck pinch, only with practical applications like acupuncture.
Enter Fiction Author Brain, which asks; “Hey, what would happen if we developed that more? What would happen if we decided to try shoving those acupuncture needles in specific pressure points on a permanent basis? Would we be able to permanently access our chi?”
Thus was born the Tapped soldier, whose surgery to unlock their chi managed to unlock an entire universe of energy.
As an author, I knew I couldn’t go giving that power out willy-nilly. I also couldn’t have them invincible. That’s just boring. So, while my Tapped soldiers can access the energy around them, they can only do so within the limitations of their own bodies.
I know, I know.
We have a lot of super heroes.
As a fan girl who squeals with delight any time a new Star Wars anything comes out, I know that we have sooooo many super soldiers out there for entertainment purposes that it can be overwhelming.
We’ve even started debates meshing worlds together to see who can beat who. Hulk vs. Superman, that sort of thing.
So why write a story about super soldiers when we already have too many to choose from?
Long answer?
Because the compelling parts of a super soldier’s story are never the feats they perform. Sure, it’s cool to see Captain America race through a battlefield and take out a dozen enemy combatants, but it isn’t what keeps us watching him.
It’s the choices he makes with those powers that keep us watching. We want to see why he fights, not just how he does it.
Short answer?
Because I wanted to.
So here’s me, embracing the cliche, and I welcome you to join me! Maybe we can all learn a little something about the power of human choice in the middle of it.
Daphnis was discovered back in 2005 by the Cassini mission team. Before that, scientists had suggested that there was a moon there based on the ripples they could see in the Keeler Gap, but hadn’t any solid proof it was there since… you know… the planet is so far away from us.
What the mission discovered is that Daphnis has a mean radius of 2.4 miles and completes one orbit around Saturn in 14 hours. It’s about 5 miles in diameter and what’s causing that ripple effect in the rings would be none other than Daphnis’ gravity brushing up against the ice particles lingering there. These ice particles move slower than Saturn, but faster than Daphnis, making that pretty wavy pattern we see.
In the grand scheme of things, that’s not much information, but as a novelist that was plenty for me. Especially since I was working on the idea that a station was placed inside the moon instead of on its surface. We do have one scene where a character is outside on the surface of the moon, trying to fix the hull of their broken ship, and I took a moment to imagine what sort of view they might have.
I mean… I had to.
That’s half the fun of science fiction, isn’t it?
Anyway, the relatively small space required that I keep this abandoned space station on the small side. I could only have the station so many level’s deep, after all, before you wound up on the other side of the moon.
And here’s where we suspend disbelief.
Because, you know, science fiction.
I put an oxygen farm in the center of the station. Which meant a literal farm of trees and plants in a greenhouse situation. Because it makes sense to me that if we ever do voyage out into space, we’ll want to bring plants with us both as scientists and for the practical use they provide.
There’s also a big fight that happens here.
Because I am nothing if not an action fan, and that shows itself a lot in my writing.
Which brings us to my topic for next week… Super Soldiers – Embrace the Cliché.
When I first started the Tapped series, I made the conscious decision that I didn’t want to set my science fiction in “a galaxy far, far away” with planets we only just now are discovering. While doing that may have afforded me a little more freedom in writing those planets, imagining what they might be like and what challenges we might face trying to reach them, I wanted to concentrate on what is already right next door to us.
Because what we already know about our neighboring planets is fascinating and if we are serious about space travel, then Mars and Jupiter and the planets orbiting our sun with us must necessarily be stepping stones.
That’s why Devon and Seach go spelunking on Pluto in the early chapters of Tapped.
Well, that and I was trying to put myself in the mindset of a teenage boy constantly confined to a space ship. I imagined it would be natural for him to want to get out and stretch his legs, as it were.
The research that went into this sequence was extensive, which I neither regret nor bemoan. I enjoyed learning about Pluto and trying to imagine ways around the obstacles we would naturally face trying to live there.
For those who might not know about it, NASA has a website. You should really check it out, if you haven’t already. It’s like a space museum you can visit on your computer.
Well, not really, but with COVID and all, I think we’ve all learned to try and escape quarantine via internet.
Anyway, the link you’ll find up there will take you to Pluto In Depth! Which is where I got a lot of my information, like the strange orbit it takes around our sun (about 248 of our earth years for one loop) and the craters littering its surface. I really hooked into the idea that there might be an underground ocean.
As an author, I could only use so much of this information without bogging down the narrative. So I tried to stick with only what directly affected the characters on the page, that way I didn’t digress into; “Look at this cool thing about Pluto!” too much.
I mean, I wanted to, but that would have derailed the whole novel.
For Enemy Souls, the sequel to Tapped that is due for release September 9th, the novel takes us to Saturn. Or, well, to Daphnis, really.
Daphnis is the “wave maker” moon located in the Keeler Gap of Saturn’s rings, but I’ll touch more on why I picked her and what I did with her next week. Right now, I’m just excited to announce that Enemy Souls will be available for purchase September 9th!
As of this week I have finished the second season of Star Trek Discovery and, while I know I will read some blog post bemoaning over-used tropes and character complaints, I maintain my love of this series.
Michael Burnham’s character continues to engage me, and the resolution with her brother Spock was satisfying to the extreme.
Speaking of Spock… The actors who continue to reprise this role have all done so with great respect to the original – our beloved Leonard Nemoy – and I find myself loving each incarnation. Ethan Peck’s version was everything I needed it to be in this season – though I did prefer the beard.
The surprise for me was how much I loved Christopher Pike. I want very much to follow this character, though I recognize the story will likely not take us via Enterprise again.
I am uncertain where season 3 will take us, but I look forward to finding out.
As of this evening my novelette “Torven” has a completed rough draft. Given its very small length (16006 words) I have been toying around with the idea of giving it away for free or really, really cheap (after it’s gone through a rigorous editing) which has led me to the normal marketing spiel/debate.
I’ve been here before. Often.
In fact, I’d like to say I’ve dipped my toes into murky depths of marketing since Sedition was first published five years ago. (Five years? Really? Sheesh.)
I have not, however, really committed to a marketing plan. Up until this point my focus was on my craft, wanting to just write the next story and grow as an author, and while none of those goals have changed (and never will, because that’s the whole point of taking ownership of your craft) … I can say that I am going to step intrepidly out into the realm of marketing.
I started, quite comically, with a giveaway of Tapped today on Amazon. The giveaway lasted all of an hour, which … really showed me how bad I am at math. (5 books + every 5th entrant wins = about an hour’s worth of giveaway time. Just in case anyone else needs this information.)
But I learned a great deal about what I want to do in the future. I’ve set up a pretty little timetable to follow for marketing – when I want to do what promotions and at what sites – and even color-coded it … because I’m a geek like that.
I am also in the process of revamping my website … with help because I’m really not great at it.
As to writing itself …
With “Torven” done I can go back to Dead Weight, the sequel to Tapped. I’ll be revamping the outline based on the things I learned in James Patterson’s Master Class (still an awesome thing and if you write, you should check it out.)
Basically, I’ll be going over the outline once a week through the month of April. Start to finish. Tightening the plot. Adding elements of the suspense genre into my science fiction … basically implementing everything Mr. Patterson set out to teach me in 22 lessons.
I’m excited.
It’ll be fun.
And I’ll record all the mayhem here because I can … and maybe it’ll help someone else down the road.
As expected I made every mistake there is to make while self-publishing a novel. After its “Hydra leak” on the 1st of January I went through the Kindle version and found no less than 25 translation, formatting, or just-plain-dunce errors that had to be fixed.
Orange Beast
The Orange Beast is still laughing at me for that.
However, I do feel better about this because if I hadn’t been so hopped up on cold medication I would have found those errors in the week prior to its official release anyway. This just means that those unfortunates who purchased the leaked novel are going to have a one-of-a-kind “whoopsie” version that no longer exists.
I’ll laugh about it in a couple of years, I’m sure.
In any case, the novel was fixed before its official release. (To include the spacing issue that had the printed version sitting at over 500 pages. That would be one of the just-plain-dunce errors.)
What have I learned from this whole self-publishing adventure?
1) Editors are worth their weight in gold.
No, seriously. They are. Those 25 errors were mostly formatting and translation problems that happened while I was bouncing between Scrivener and Word.
2) Never work while on cold medication.
‘Nuff said.
3) Marketing is pretty much the same on your own as with a small press.
Yeah, there’s really very little difference here. As much as I love my publishers and the validation they gave me for even accepting my work to begin with, a book doesn’t just fly off the virtual shelves on its own.
That said, I’m still not doing much marketing-wise. I’ll submit Tapped to various review sites and all that, but otherwise I’m not going to stress this point. I made this decision way back when Sedition was first published and while it makes no “business sense” I’m sticking to it.
I want to be a better storyteller. I want to tell stories that move people, even if it’s only a select number of people. I feel totally awesome about the readership I already have. (Hey, Readers! I uber loves you all!)
4) This is fun.
In spite of my fights with Scrivener and my frustration with Word and staring at documents for hours on end while trying to make the formatting right, I had a lot of fun doing this. Don’t ask me why. I think only writers can really understand it.
To sum up, I will probably do this with more than just the Tapped series.
Yes, I understand the stigma that comes with self-published authors but I’m going to lean back on the real tradition here; the tradition of storytellers wandering from place to place, giving their entertainment away for lodging or food. Celebrities for a night or a day, or a holiday week, and then they faded into the background directly after their job was done.
They didn’t have publishers back then, just word of mouth and a distinct love for what they did.
Or … well … a mistaken “bang” on the 1st because in my NyQuil induced haze I accidentally “leaked” the novel online but we’re moving past that now. This is my first self-published novel and I’m equal parts terrified and pleased by it.
Tapped is a space-traveling adventure that follows the Barlow family as they unwittingly begin an underground railroad for refugees in Consulate space. It’s a story about what makes a family. It’s a story about the consequences of standing up for your convictions and a brothers-in-arms story all wrapped up together.
The original concept for this novel was that I wanted a mother-son story. We have a lot of mother-daughter, father-son novels out there but I haven’t seen as many dealing with the relationship between a mother and her son. And since I happen to be the mother of one incredible little boy it was important to me that the Greeks not get the final word here.
(No, really. The Greeks had the whole Oedipus thing that was really gross and weird. Just … yuck.)
In any case, I’m throwing confetti and will enjoy some wine and a comfortable evening celebrating my first self-published release. It has been an adventure learning how to format and prepare a book for publication and, to be honest, kind of fun.
Jorry thought winning a galactic war would be enough to buy a peaceful life. She was wrong. Running from the government she fought so hard for, she carves a simple life out for herself and her family. When her family is dragged into a black market deal Jorry finds herself directly in the sights of those she’s been hiding from and must decide how far she’s willing to go to protect the people she loves.
