Excerpt from Insufficient Mating Material

Tigron Empire of the Djinn
ARK IMPERIAL, Operating Theater

Damn them! Prince Djetthro-Jason eyed the masked males and the unpleasant array of implements they were preparing to use on him.

I haven't told them everything, and I'm not about to. No way am I going to invite anyone to take a laser to my privates. Ahhh, Fewmet!

The "battlefield analgesia" was wearing off. During the duel that he'd begun as Commander Jason and ended--defeated--as Prince Djetthro-Jason, he'd felt almost no pain despite the damage Tarrant-Arragon had inflicted.

Now, his massively bruised thigh throbbed heavily, his neck muscles ached, and his jaw...it hurt even to think about his jaw. Perhaps worse--but less so by the moment--was the damage to his alpha-male machismo as he lay strapped down, stark naked, in his enemy's operating theater, preparing his mind for surgery without anesthetic. Also for "the fate worse than death" which was to come.

If Tarrant-Arragon had observed Great Djinn tradition, the duel they'd fought less than an hour ago ought to have been to the death.

Why hadn't Tarrant-Arragon killed him then and there? To the victor went the Empire, the Ark Imperial, and gods-Right to any female he wanted...and they both wanted the same female.

Damn it! Even if he wanted to stop, I should've fought on after he crippled my leg and shattered my bloody jaw. Why didn't I? What's left for me?

What indeed?

I'll be the Djinn equivalent of a broken thoroughbred stallion put out to stud. It's fairly obvious why Tarrant-Arragon made an excuse not to finish me off.

The Great Djinn were nearly extinct. In twenty years' time, Tarrant-Arragon's and Djinni-vera's children would need true-Djinn mates, all entitled to the silent D-prefix to their royal Djinn names. That's why!

When the "fate worse than death" had been spelled out, it had been sheer bravado to mumble that he wanted to marry Princess Martia-Djulia.

Maybe I do. Maybe I don't.

It hurt how much he still wanted Djinni-vera, who'd been the last Djinn virgin in all the Communicating Worlds, and betrothed to be his, until Tarrant-Arragon abducted her by force and took her virginity.

What consolation would it be to have Tarrant-Arragon's sexy, fashionista bitch of a sister in his power and in his bed instead?

Djetth winced at the savagery of his thoughts about Martia-Djulia. Shards of pain shot along his broken jawline.

"Well, Djetthro-Jason, are you ready to be carved up for your new identity and your new life as my little sister's glorified love slave?"

From somewhere out of Djetth's line of sight, Tarrant-Arragon taunted him, stressing the part of Djetth's real name that he'd used until his cover as "Commander Jason" was blown and he was overpowered and arrested.

Djetth did not turn his head. The pain in his face and head was intolerable enough without moving.

"Ahhh, I do believe that Our Imperial surgeons are ready to do away with that distinctive jagged scar on your cheek," Tarrant-Arragon crooned. "And screw together your jaw."

What else might they do while he was under the laser and the knife? While his face was open, might they carve out a sensory gland or two? Implant a tracking device? Use his broken jaw as an excuse to weld a mask over his head?

Prince Djetthro-Jason would be a latter-day "Man in the Iron Mask" if they realized how closely he resembled Crown Prince Tarrant-Arragon. Which he would, without his scars, his colorful contact lenses and his long, blond-dyed hair.

Djetth glanced at the treacherous, turncoat 'Rhett, who'd been his bloody useless "second" at the duel, and who was still hanging around.

What for? Damn him. 'Rhett was too much the intergalactic statesman for his own--or anyone else's--good.

If the patient lost consciousness, Tarrant-Arragon could decide that the chances for galactic peace would be better if Djetthro-Jason were neutered...one way or another. Given the secrets 'Rhett knew, 'Rhett might agree.

"No--" Djetth groaned with the unexpected agony of trying to speak. He wanted to refuse anesthetic again. How he wished there was somebody present whom he could trust!

A door swished open.

"Does he have to be in such pain?" The cause of all the trouble spoke from the doorway. She sounded on edge, as if she felt his pain telepathically.

Djinni-vera! No longer his Djinni. By conquest, by the irrevocable exchange of vows, and finally by her own choice, she was Tarrant-Arragon's.

By All the Lechers of Antiquity, how he loved her! At that moment. For coming. Mentally Djetth qualified his thoughts. Djinni-vera might not love him now, but she was honorable to the core. Tarrant-Arragon wouldn't dare do anything dastardly in front of her.

As she glided to his surgical table, Djetth looked at her wildly, helplessly, with mute appeal, hoping that she would read his mind and aid him this one last time.

Djinni-vera's amethyst eyes widened as if she had Heard him and understood. Her gaze averted, she reached out and dropped a gauzy white cloth of some sort over his monstrously inappropriate erection.

To others, her action might have looked like public modesty on her part. Djetth assumed that Djinni had read the part of his mind that was worrying about the striking tattoo that only showed up in the dark or when he was suitably excited.

Thank you he thought. Please help me. Stay.

She nodded, and took his fettered hand with her undamaged left. "You've been macho about this too long, J-J. Why won't you let them put you to sleep?"

"Careful, my love," Tarrant-Arragon said, moving possessively to her side. "You can never call him J-J again. Nor may you use any of his other damned traitor's aliases. Not J-J, not Commander Jason. Traitors cannot be seen to survive their attempts on my life. Commander Jason is officially dead, and everyone--including Martia-Djulia--must believe it. From this day forward, he's Prince Djetthro-Jason."

"What a mouthful..." Djinni began; then her changing expression told him that she must have read a thought-pun he couldn't resist. "Djetth!"

She frowned sternly.

"I know you Great Djinn males can't help thinking of sex all the time. But it's not helpful, Djetth. As long as you have your saturniid gland, you're dangerous."

Not dangerous to you, kid. You won't ovulate while you're pregnant, and probably not for a while after that, he thought back at her.

Her mouth twisted in a wry smile.

"You'd be safer if you let them remove it."

Some aspects of Royal Djinn maleness one would rather die than surrender, he rejoined, hoping she would not read his darker thoughts.

"Martia-Djulia would be better off if you couldn't have the rut-rage again, too..." As she spoke, Djinni tossed her head as if shaking off a bothersome fly.

Djetth wondered if Djinni had unexpectedly Channeled someone else's reasoning. Djinni couldn't possibly know how savagely Martia-Djulia liked to be served in bed.

"I saw Palace footage of you having the rut-rage with Martia-Djulia." The little mind-reader's voice rose in protest at the thought he hadn't meant her to sense.

You saw? You saw what, exactly? His thought question was a ploy to distract her from thinking about the rut-rage, but no sooner had he asked than he dreaded how detailed her reply might be....

Best wishes,
Rowena Cherry

Tis the season

Deck the web with boughs of holly falala....
but I've got this deadline folly...
so my blog is in a hurry .....
please fogive me if I scurry falala....
la la la la

tis the season and I'm busy writing along with the other holiday things

Hopefully next week I'll be done

until then...

Explaining Vampire Physiology

(I always enjoy good expository dialogue, especially about the biology of other species, so I try to write it the way I like to read it. One of my very favorites in that "vein" is Dr. Weyland's lecture on "how nature would design a vampire" in Suzy McKee Charnas' THE VAMPIRE TAPESTRY. An excellent recent book that portrays an interestingly worked-out vampire species is Octavia Butler's FLEDGLING. Here's an example of information feed about the physiology and psychology of an imaginary race from one of my books. This is an excerpt from DARK CHANGELING, the first-published novel in my "alien" vampire series. Roger Darvell has just met his mentor, the vampire elder Volnar, who in this scene begins to answer Roger's questions about their species. Sylvia is a young female vampire Roger has known for a short time.)

"You started late," said Volnar. "Most of us acquire our psychic talents in our early teens -- as you did, didn't you? -- but start needing human blood soon thereafter, around sixteen."

"Children don't?" said Roger. He'd had trouble visualizing an infant or toddler feeding on a human adult.

"Of course not," Volnar chuckled. "Babies are born with two needle-like teeth -- the only time we have those absurd rattlesnake fangs beloved by Hollywood -- to feed on the mother's blood as well as her milk. You didn't, thanks to your human half. At weaning, three or four years old, we lose the fangs and switch to raw meat, milk, and animal blood."

"Makes sense," Roger said. "Growing children would need the calories in solid food."

"In early adolescence the ability to digest it disappears, when we lose our wolf-like incisors and canines, to be replaced by a more human-appearing set for drawing blood inconspicuously. It's a good thing you didn't undergo those changes, or you could never have passed for human."

"I'm still baffled about the way you manipulated me. Why this `experiment,' leaving me to flounder through those developmental stages alone? Why did you care whether a hybrid was `viable'?"

"Quite simply," said Volnar, "because we aren't replacing ourselves. Long-lived predators have to breed slowly in comparison to their prey, to avoid overrunning the food supply, but in recent centuries our low reproductive rate has become a crisis. Females more often than not go into estrus without conceiving. The incidence of miscarriages has increased, too."

Roger set down the brandy and stared at him. "You're looking for new blood, aren't you?" He winced at his unintentional pun. "You think human DNA might revitalize your gene pool."

"Exactly." Volnar smiled as if pleased at his quick comprehension. "Some of the elders consider it contamination, but I've overruled them. Including the ones who make derogatory remarks about `lap dogs pretending to be wolves.'"

Roger felt his chest tighten with anger. Though he wasn't sure he wanted to be a wolf, he didn't care for the proposed alternative.

"Some of them," Volnar continued, "cite the fable of the Ugly Duckling, which they think ends on a note of unwarranted optimism. What kind of a swan could the creature become, crippled by a barnyard fowl's conditioning?"

"Are you deliberately trying to goad me?"

"Only preparing you," Volnar said, "for the hostility you're sure to encounter sooner or later. Not that it's universal. Most of those who know about your existence either tentatively approve or are indifferent."

"The nay-sayers have a point," Roger said. "Do you happen to have read Mark Twain's Pudd'nhead Wilson?"

"Actually, no."

"Two boys are switched in infancy, half-brothers, the son of a slave woman and the son of the mistress of the house. When they reach adulthood and the truth is revealed, the young man who's grown up thinking himself a slave suddenly becomes the master's heir. One might expect a Cinderella conclusion, but that doesn't happen. The slave turned master proves utterly unfit for the station to which he was born."

"You don't have to apply that pessimistic tale to yourself. You've done better than that."

"Oh, have I? Not from my viewpoint." Roger took a deep breath, then coughed when he inhaled cigar smoke instead of fresh air. "How can you stand that blasted thing?" He wondered whether the smoke was a test of his willingness to accept Volnar's domination. When he'd cleared his throat, he said, "What you've made me is a misfit among both vampires and my human peers."

"On the contrary, you've done remarkably well, considering how you were forced to `flounder,'" Volnar said. "Not unlike Tarzan in Burroughs' novel, who, after being reared by apes, as an ape, taught himself to read and eventually functioned not only as a civilized man but as an aristocrat of the most civilized nation on earth."

"A pulp fantasy," Roger said. "Real-life feral children more often become mental and emotional cripples."

"That didn't happen to you, however," said Volnar, "so I suggest you stop wasting energy on resentment."

"But I haven't turned out like Tarzan. More like a badly socialized puppy."

"In what way?" said Volnar.

"Well, I understand that if you take a puppy away from its mother and litter mates too soon, it doesn't know how to behave like a dog. On the other hand, if you leave the separation too late, the pup can never fully adjust to life with a human master. Either way, you have a maladjusted dog."

"It's true that there are critical periods in our childhood and adolescence -- times of imprinting, as with ducklings. The adaptability of young vampires is a double-edged weapon."

Roger stood up, too restless to hold still. "Sylvia has a fear of religious objects -- that's the kind of thing you mean, don't you?"

"Yes. Her advisor was too lax. She was exposed to excessive human influences. She almost thought, in her mid-teens, that she was human. Then she drifted the other way and picked up a cluster of absurd superstitions about her nature."

"Then I'm not the only child whose upbringing you people royally fouled up." He simmered with tension, half tempted to take a swing at Volnar just to discharge it.

"Learning how you've dealt with your highly specialized problems may help us avoid mistakes with future generations." Volnar rested the cigar in an ashtray and strode to Roger's side. "Don't let anger blind you to the possibilities, young man. This stage is only the beginning. The next is to breed you with a female of our species."

Roger jerked away from the elder's outstretched hand. "What? Do you think for one minute I'd consider that? Creating another child to suffer what I've gone through?"

"He or she wouldn't suffer the `identity crisis' you've had," Volnar said, walking over to pick up his unfinished cigar. "The child will know his or her nature and destiny from the start. I'll serve as its advisor myself."

"All the more reason why I'd run miles to avoid the whole thing."

"Nevertheless, I do expect you to consider it," Volnar said. "I've contacted a young woman, born in the 1880s, who has proven her fertility. She conceived more than once but miscarried each time. With you as the sire, perhaps a pregnancy might --"

"Not interested," Roger cut him off. "I can't condone any more of your damned experiments. And what makes you think this woman would accept being forced into mating with a -- a halfbreed?"

"Not forced! Our women choose their own mates, subject to veto by the elders, to prevent inbreeding. I've already explained your background to her, and she is enthusiastic."

"She may like the idea of being a reproductive machine for you, but I don't!" He almost wanted to rush out of the room and drive away, but the need to learn as much as he could stopped him.

"Juliette doesn't fit that description in the least. She teaches English at the College of William and Mary in Virginia and writes historical romances under a nom de plume -- far from a mindless breeding machine. However, she does want a child, and her next estrus is due fairly soon. Think it over."

"I don't need to think," Roger said, baring his teeth. "I'm absolutely sure that I don't want to serve as sperm donor to a woman I've never met in support of a project I don't believe in."

Volnar said, "Aren't you curious, if nothing else?"

"What do you mean?"

"Many of our males live out their first thousand years -- or more -- without once being chosen to mate. This may be your single chance to experience fully consummated genital sexuality."

The notion disturbed Roger, though he couldn't say why; he certainly felt no physical urge for the act Volnar alluded to. "You keep mentioning estrus, as if vampire females went into heat like --"

"Dogs? Wolves?" Volnar's lips quirked in amusement. "They do, and male vampires can consummate the sexual act only when stimulated by a female in heat. Mating lasts through an entire night of repeated copulation. If an unwanted conception occurs, the woman can mentally compel her body to eject the embryo." He became more serious. "Not that this problem comes up very often anymore. We do need your genes, Roger. Your potential hybrid vigor."

So, well then WHAT if....????

Folks:

Linnea brought up that one thought process I will be talking about in my review column the first half of 2007 -- hypothesizing.

http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/2007/ will show you the list of books to be reviewed the first half of the year. The columns will be posted after they have been printed in the magazine that paid for them, then posted to THEIR website -- finally on simegen.com for archive.

Hypothesizing is a cognitive function that animals don't have -- the ability to think about something that is not, might never be, should never be. It's the ability to think abstractly (i.e. do algebra).

In this blog we discussed what it is that a human could possibly see in an alien (a real non-human but intelligent person) that would be sexually and romantically attractive.

I mentioned a shapeless blob, and everyone immediately chimed in ODO -- well, yeah, I'm a serious Odo fan (STAR TREK DS-9 -- if you haven't seen it, get the DVD's from the library at least! Odo is something else!)

So for writers and readers of Alien Romance it isn't the appearance that ignites the spark.

We write about how it is that "love at first sight" can operate even with an alien (maybe one you can't even see!)

We write about that sense of soul-to-soul recognition. And we write about it emotionally.

But Linnea put her finger on exactly what it is that could be recognized over that biological gulf that could set off the total romantic attachment of "love at first sight." It's the cognitive function that has to tie all "intelligent" life in all galaxies together -- the ability to hypothesize.

It is our imaginations that unite us - even as imagination divides us. Imagined slights, insults, and the "well she thinks she's so great!" cognitive error of believing you know what another person thinks just from what they do.

So imagination would make the main axis of conflict in an Alien Romance.

Mostly we believe that those fabulous lovers we imagine in the night aren't real.

But what if they are? I mean what if they ALL are real?

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.simegen.com/jl/

Where does the creativity come from?

Hey kids,

Well, it's Monday, meaning it's my turn to blog. Given I'm hip-deep in deadlines for THE DOWN HOME ZOMBIE BLUES and the final galleys just arrived on GAMES OF COMMAND and I'm leaving on a seven-day cruise Sunday...you'd think I'd be fresh out of brain power.

You're right. I am. I have no idea where this blog is going to come from or go, but it's just going to happen. So fly along with me...

Which is why it's titled WHERE DOES THE CREATIVITY COME FROM?

How do we think up all this strange shhhhhtuff? (You all thought Iwas going to use another word, no?) Where is that dark room in an author's brain where characters and stories and plots reside, fermenting?

I was asked this question recently by a police detective who works outside Chicago. Not that I'm in any particular kind of trouble, mind you. I actually was asking him some questions about homicide detectives since the male protagonist in my current WIP has that career. And the detective--being by nature a question-asker or he'd not be in that biz--returned the favor and asked me: how do authors think of all this stuff?

What I told him was this: for every author it's different but I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that there's not an author out there who doesn't play with What If?.

What if...a character doesn't go to work that day but stays home and witnessess her neighbor doing [fill in the blank]? What if...Trilby brings an unknown injured pilot on board her starfreighter instead of (oh-so-more-wisely) leaving him to fend on his own? What if...a cop leaving a crime scene spills coffee on himself as he's pulling his car away from the curb and--instead of going back to the station with the computer he's taking into evidence--decides to make a quick stop home to change his clothes...

...and is kidnapped by outerspace aliens and 'beamed' on board a starship.

What if?

What each author does with their What Ifs is unique to that author's style (and deviousness!). But the fact that we all use the What If is a common denominator. It's the author's tool for looking at What Is and making it into What Could Be...in a hundred different variations.

Just look at the authors on this blog. We all write in pretty much the same genre. We write female protagonists. Male protagonists. Starships and space. Aliens and vampires (which are alien to mortal humans). We write fast-paced action. We write passionate romance. You'd think we'd all be writing the same story--and each other's stories--over and over.

We're not. Because each author takes that What If into herself and makes it uniquely her own.

But where does that ability to turn what's inside into a story come from?

Feelings. At least, that's where it is in me. And, if you use Dwight Swain as a writing guru as I do--that's where Swain say it comes from, too. Feelings. I know when I'm writing well because I get all fluttery inside. I know when I'm writing really well because my hands go cold and I've been known to jump out of my chair and pace around the office (trying not to step on the cat who've I've most likely dislodged from my desk in the process).

That's why although the technical craft of writing can be taught, what makes a book really good, what turns words into a best seller is much more difficult.

Where that creativity lives in me or in you can't be pinpointed on a chart or map. If you want to be a writer, all I can do is give you the pathway that leads to it. And it's under that sign over there that says What If?.

Enter at your own risk. You might come out being an author.

~Linnea
www.linneasinclair.com

Insufficient Mating Material and Genitalia

If you like to ponder what aliens might think of Earthling males' genitals, see the joke in the Comments on my last blog.

If you don't like the jokes I like, you won't be interested in Insufficient Mating Material, in stores from January 30th 2007.

For more dignified reading, scroll down to Susan Grant's cool excerpt.

Best wishes,
Rowena Cherry
aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2006/11/empires-dreams

My Favorite Earthling (instalment #4)

The third instalment of Susan Grant's masterly new alien romance was posted on October 28th.
Since then, the blog has been pretty active, so I'm sharing my day this week.

Hunky human hero, Jared Jasper --real estate mogul, brother of a feminine US Senator (who happens to have married an alien)-- is exploring an alien spacecraft that crashed onto his family ranch. As he sits in the pilot's seat, a video communication screen turns on, and he realizes that the enemy aliens may have seen him.


Excerpted from MY FAVORITE EARTHLING
by SUSAN GRANT
copyright Susan Grant 2006

MARCH 2007
ISBN 0373771924; HQN books


This uncorrected excerpt may contain errors and other text not found in the final printed novel and is not for sale. Please don’t share the text with anyone without first receiving permission from the author to do so.



Chapter Four

Whoa, baby. Jared sat up straighter in the pilot seat as the striking alien woman appeared onscreen. Heavy, dark, and long, her hair whipped like Medusa’s snakes around her shoulders and breasts as she turned to face him.

Shouting something, the woman shoved a hand through her wild mane of hair. A thick, intricately jeweled band glittered on her upper arm. This was no shopping mall purchase. The workmanship was exquisite and matched the earring dangling from her left ear. The chick was buff, sculpted muscles flexing. She wore a black jumpsuit that was so formfitting it looked painted on. Jutting nipples pushed up against the fabric by one unforgettable pair of breasts as her chest literally heaved.
So much for any doubts as to the two-way feature of the ship’s TV. She could see him, no doubt about that. Her eyes had opened wide at the sight of him, her mouth forming a luscious circle of surprise.

The moment hung in freeze-frame. He didn’t move. He had the wildest impression of having startled a rare and beautiful mythical being like a mermaid or fairy: a few seconds of unforgettable eye contact before she escaped forever.
“Jared,” Evie whispered. “Put your eyeballs back in your head.”

He lifted a finger to his lips. He didn’t want to scare the woman away.

The alien woman must have taken his gesture as if he were telling her to be quiet. Wielding a knife she stormed the screen. So much for thoughts of a fairy or mermaid; she looked more like an avenging warrior princess off the pages of a Manga comic book.

“Uh oh,” Evie said. “Now she’s pissed.”

“Actually, a little more than pissed. Given half a chance, she’d probably cut out my heart and eat it for dinner.”

This is the face of your enemy.

And this was the face of hers, he thought. Against his better judgment—and Evie’s—he stayed put.

The woman stopped inches from the screen to finish telling him off, but he couldn’t understand a word she said. “What we need is a little closed-captioning.” Lights blinked on the arm rests. “Maybe one of these is a translator.”

“What if it starts the engines? What if it makes it fly?”

“Don’t panic. The tech may be a lot more advanced than what we have, but some things stay the same. Controls on a seat are usually for convenience or comfort items.”

He tapped them one by one, figuring he’d keep trying until he found one that translated. It was worth a shot. Cavin had a translator implanted in his brain for two-way language understanding, so likely there was something similar in the cockpit. Down the bank of lights he went. “Talk to me, baby. Talk to me...”

The alien warrior-chick reared back, startled. A spark of fear in her eyes disappeared almost as quickly as it showed up.

“Earthling,” she spat.

“You got that right.”

“Trespasser. Barbarian!”

Jared coughed out a laugh. “There’s only one barbarian around here, and it’s not me. Look at you. We stopped dressing like that a thousand years ago. Daggers are pretty much passé, too. So, is this a retro fashion trend, or are all of you Coalition types this primitive?”

Evie hissed. “Jared, you're going to start a war.”

“We’re already in a war,” he whispered back. “I'm just adding a little fear and awe.”

“I will see you brought to me in chains, Earthling!” the alien chick yelled to him.

“I haven’t had an offer that exciting in a while. Do I get to see you in chains, too?”

The woman’s mouth dipped in a sneer as she looked him over from head to boots. Stripped naked, he doubted he would have felt more exposed to her scrutiny. “I’d rather cough up blood.’

“Nice.”

“Jared,” Evie warned. “Don’t make me come down there and get you.”

“I’ve got to go,” he told the alien woman. “But I’d like to chat more sometime. I have to admit, the chains thing really got my imagination going.”

Her mouth tightened. She had very expressive eyes, Jared noted. In them, it was very easy to see every detail of his excruciating death should she get her hands on him which was something that would never happen because he’d fight to the death to keep her people from taking over his world. Even if every Coalition woman was as hot as she was.

“Jared?” Evie interrupted. “You’re doing it again.”

“Doing what?” he whispered back.

“Staring at each other.” Evie’s face was centered in the open hatch above, framed by blue sky. Her hair swung just above his head.

“I’m not staring at her. I’m contemplating her contemplating my death.”

“Who are you talking to?” Warrior-chick demanded.

“My staff. And some members of my harem.”

Evie made a sound that was strangely close to the one Warrior-chick made.

“Who are you?” the woman asked.

“You don’t know?”

“Careful, Jared.”

I know what I’m doing, he told Evie with a frown.

He leaned forward. “You can call me The Prince.”

“Oh, jeez,” Evie muttered. “I can’t listen to this anymore.”

“You are a prince?” Warrior-chick’s chin came up as she asked the question, her nostrils pinching.

“I’m the Prince. And my message to you is this: if your people come back for another try at landing on Earth, we’ll be waiting. A billion more guys like me, waiting.” Trash talk. But sometimes the most effective weapons were psychological. “Mess with Earth and your defeat will become your reality. Got that? Now, have a nice day, baby.”

Jared pushed free of the pilot seat’s glove-tight hold. He pulled himself out the hatch and slammed it closed behind him. “What the hell just happened?” He rubbed a tired hand over his face. “I need a shave.”

“What just happened? I don’t know, Jared, you tell me.” Evie dropped down next to him on the fighter-craft’s invisible wing. Side by side, they sat, lags dangling. “Who are you? Because whoever you were in that cockpit, I didn’t recognize him.”

“It’s not someone you’d know unless you flew on my wing in an F-16. It’s how I deal with the stress of combat; it’s how most of the guys do, I think. Maybe it’s why we have the call signs, to differentiate who we are inside the cockpit from who we are outside of it. An alter ego. But when I leave the unit, he stays behind. Ol’ Prince is not exactly family friendly.”

“He’s a jerk.”

“But he’s perfect for dealing with uppity Coalition bitches.” Jared shifted his focus to the closed hatch. He couldn’t believe the argument had actually turned him on. “What a woman, huh? Totally not my type, but...wow.” He thought of her hair whipping around her shoulders, pictured her naked, that long hair stuck to her damp skin, letting tantalizing peeks of her breasts and stomach show through, skin that was damp from having sex with him, not from pumping iron. Or maybe they’d do it after they worked out...and before...and...

“Jared.”

Evie’s voice jolted him out of a fantasy of the alien woman bent over a table, her lush breasts in his hands as he thrust into her. By now he had such a hard-on that he hunched over, grateful he was wearing thick sweats. What the hell was wrong with him? He wasn’t in high school anymore. “Say again?” he said with a trace of hoarseness in his voice.

Evie’s dark eyes sparkled. “Chemistry. I said it was amazing that you can feel it across light years of space.”

“Chemistry?” He choked out a laugh. “I have a few ideas on what to call it, but it’s not that.”

“Denial.”

“Sanity.”

“Jared, you’re so unromantic.”

“She’s the enemy.”

“So? Woo her over to the dark side. Use the force.”

He pulled out his cell phone to call Cavin and brief him on what they’d discovered. “Force or no force, Miss Sunshine lives in a galaxy far, far away. After our little conversation today, I’m doubly determined to keep it that way.”
~~~*~~~

Shooting Star release

Shooting Star is now out. And to celebrate I'm giving away a computer bag from Coldwater Creek. Visit my website at www.cindyholby.com to enter

Darkover Con

Over Thanksgiving weekend (as usual) we attended Darkover Grand Council, a cozy little con held every year just north of Baltimore. It includes many writing-oriented panels. With one other author, a man, I had a session on romance in SF and fantasy. The subtitle of the panel was, in part, "Does it belong there?" I expected to have to spend at least a little time defending my affirmative answer to that question, but my fellow panelist and everyone in the small audience had a completely positive attitude toward SF/paranormal romance.

I talked a little about the prehistory of the genre, such as myths, fairy tales, the Gothic romance, and mid-20th-century works such as DEATH TAKES A HOLIDAY, BELL, BOOK, AND CANDLE, and THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR. I also mentioned some SF novels that could be marketed as romance if they were published today, such as Marion Zimmer Bradley's SPELL SWORD and Jacqueline Lichtenberg and Jean Lorrah's FIRST CHANNEL. Vampire romance was discussed, naturally, and I cited Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA as the major precursor of that subgenre. A point was brought up about early SF in which the love story is often a minor subplot and the heroine just a prize for the victorious hero, versus newer fiction in which the love story is fully integrated into the plot and the heroine is a strong character. From there it's a short hop to true cross-genre SF or fantasy romance.

We spent most of the hour exchanging recommendations and discussing our favorite books. Catherine Asaro, J. D. Robb, and Lois McMaster Bujold were highly praised. Since my reading experience lies mostly in fantasy and the supernatural, I talked about Mercedes Lackey's fairy tale retellings and various "Tam Lin" adaptations such as Pamela Dean's TAM LIN and Diana Wynne Jones' FIRE AND HEMLOCK. And of course vampire fiction! It was a pleasure to meet a group of SF fans who showed enthusiasm for stories that, like ours, emphasize character development and relationships.

Converting a Novel to a Screenplay

Folks:

On a writer's list I'm on, one of the professional writers asked for advice for where to find books on screenwriting because he wanted to convert one of his novels to a screenplay.

As it happened, this is a subject I've been focusing on lately, so here is my answer.

Syd Field, the great screenwriting teacher, states categorically (in SCREENWRITING) that a novel is NOT a movie and shows you how and why that's so.

That incontrovertible fact is the reason so many writers are bummed when they see their work made for the screen, small or large. Scriptwriters always end up changing the THEME of the work, because they aren't you and can't "have" your idea from scratch.

So they do violence to your idea to conform it to the commercial marketplace. (i.e., they make the protag's motive revenge because audiences understand that better than what you used which the screenwriter just didn't understand. That is, "revenge" is a higher concept than your novel's concept. It is understood more easily by more people. So with big bucks riding on it, the protag's character gets warped into vengeful.)

Doing the conversion yourself, though, unless you comprehend the hard fact of the nature of the difference and the reasons writers assigned to convert a novel fail, will guarantee your screenplay will never sell.

Your novel must BECOME a screenplay or script for TV (very VERY different markets, and not just a different way of laying out the type on the page, but differing in content and where climaxes have to go by page number and the kind of character work you can do.)

Creating characters for a script is to creating novel characters as Japanese Brush Painting is to Rembrandt.

They're both highly advanced art forms -- but they are different SKILLS. The Japanese artist's eye is trained to "see" differently. The scriptwriter's "eye" for character is trained to "see" differently from the novelist's.

For a script to sell, the characters must be OUTLINES, vivid and identifyable archetypes, not individuals.

Why?

Because films cost too much to make.

To sell the script, you must attract the best name actors, and those actors will judge your script by how well they can fit themselves inside the outline of your characters. If you fill in all the colors, tones, and dimensions (as Rembrandt) you leave no room for the actor's SELF, and the script will not sell, or if it does, the actor will warp the character to suit himself and the director.

That's not art -- it's business. It's all about the cost difference per minute of entertainment delivered via the novel and the film.

I do intend to convert some of my novels to scripts, and am working through a course on screenwriting now.

I have lots to learn, but if you've learned and internalized the NOVEL paradigm, you can learn any paradigm used for storytelling.

That is, you have to understand intellectually, just how you accomplished the structuring of your original story -- the more you rely on your innate "talent," the more likely you are to fail at the converting of your own novel to a screenplay.

You have to know and understand the story-structure mechanism in a coldly analytical way to be able to accomplish this conversion trick.

If you can turn your "talent" instinct on and off, you can do it.

I highly recommend SAVE THE CAT! by Blake Snyder and the brand new board software (also titled SAVE THE CAT! ) that lets you lay out your material in the standard Hollywood format on electronic 3X5 cards (that grow to whatever size you need as you make notes). Both book and software include the precise beat-sheet which is the key to success in selling your screenplay. (Mention my name if you email Blake.)

See my Amazon review of the book. I'm vetting the software now. It's amazing. It's not on amazon yet. You can get it on blakesnyder.com though.

http://www.amazon.com/Save-Last-Book-Screenwriting-Youll/dp/1932907009/rereadablebooksr/

I also have two review columns in the New Age Magazine column I do focusing on the esoteric reasons for the difference between novel and screenplay. I use SAVE THE CAT! as the basis of comparison. Those two columns will be posted on my own site in February and April. Blake Snyder wants to link to the April review because he thought I explained it well.

http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/2007/

The real trick of this head-spinning conversion problem is to realize that a great novel concept is NOT a saleable film concept. The concept needs to be recast from the inside out to become a movie.

And then you have to use the beat sheet to structure the script precisely from that filmable concept - NOT from anything in the novel itself.

The novel's material and climaxes are all in the wrong places -- the character arcs and the character formulations are all wrong. The description is all wrong. The details are all wrong. It all has to be redone from scratch, as if you'd never written the novel and are just burning to tell this story in screenplay form.

Read Syd Field's (he's very repetitive, but that emphasizes the points) opus SCREENWRITING where he explains the how and why of this novel/screenplay conversion process.

You can probably get his books from the library, but I bought 3 of his books and filled them with underlines and post-it notes.

However, my desk reference as I work on scripting a story is SAVE THE CAT! with its complete beat sheet. That beat sheet and accompanying explanation is well worth the price of the book. You can download a copy of the beat sheet without explanation on blakesnyder.com then use it in notepad or Word to structure your story into screenplay format.

Remember, you can't take the novel you've written, it's characters and their conflicts, and just take the words and reformat them into script form scene by scene.

You have to "have the idea" for the novel over again from scratch, casting it in High Concept form, or it just has no chance in today's flooded script market.

You probably already know more about screenwriting than you do about novel writing -- because you've probably seen more movies than you've read books, so you can "sense" the formula behind movies. You always know what's coming when watching a film, don't you? That's unconscious. To write a film, you have to make that gut knowledge into conscious knowledge.

Read SAVE THE CAT! where those current best selling script formulas are revealed in detail. Pick one and re-have your Idea in Concept form. (you don't get ideas for movies, you get concepts -- and there is a very important difference -- but it's all just storycraft.)

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.simegen.com/jl/

Debunking Authorly Urban Legends

Eons ago, when I was in college (or it might have been grad school), I remember listening to a professor expounded on what L. Frank Baum really meant to say when he wrote the Wizard of Oz. It had something to do with repressed homosexual urges and a fascination with bestiality…well, you can figure out the rest. It was, to my way of thinking, really off the wall. And of course, L. Frank was dead and couldn’t walk up to the professor and pop the man one in the eye for his far-fetched statements.

But the prof said all this with such authority. Because he was a learned prof and therefore, knew more than the poor little author did.

I laughed about it then. Being a poor little author myself, I’m not laughing about it now.

Thankfully, Linnea Urban Legends are rare (at least, I’ve not been pointed to a great many of them). But there are a few out there that readers have directed me to. And since I’m still alive and kicking, I’d like to debunk a few of those before some learned prof stands up in class fifty years from now telling people what Linnea Sinclair really meant when she wrote her books—and have it all be so very wrong.

These are a few things (paraphrased and clipped for brevity) I’ve seen reviewers, bloggers et al state they "know" about me and my writing:

1 - McMaster Bujold is obviously Sinclair's SF antecedents. The opening scenes of Finders Keepers owe a great deal to Shards of Honor.

Answer – This is really embarrassing to admit but I’ve never read Shards of Honor. I know I should read Bujold but I haven’t. Slap me silly for not keeping up with my required reading but don’t make assumptions as to where I get my storylines from. Try asking me. So any conclusion that I’ve ripped off Bujold’s work is pure bunk.

2 – I just finished Gabriel’s Ghost. Having read An Accidental Goddess, Gabriel’s Ghost is proof that the author gets better the more she writes.

Answer – Thanks for the backhanded compliment. Check the publication dates. Gabriel’s was written before Goddess. So I guess I’m going downhill. It must be age and an increasing lack of tolerance for alcohol.

3 – Gabriel's Ghost was written by someone whose SF influences are movies and TV series… It's clear from Linnea Sinclair's skills that Gabriel's Ghost is not the product of a writer who doesn't read. [Therefore] Gabriel's Ghost is the result of a canny calculation... poised to pull an audience... ignorant of...nanotechnology, quantum states, posthumans, the singularity and other staples of post-1980s prose SF. [Gabriel's Ghost is] a romantically charged SF novel that sticks to humanoid aliens and media-SF technology.

Answer – And you say that like it's such a bad thing...

Okay, if I'm reading it right, the reviewer here had decided that because my book didn’t focus on quantum states and singularities, that it was a deliberate concoction on my part to garner a non-scientifically oriented audience ("dominated by women and girls"). Wow. I had no idea I was so smart, marketing-wise. How come Madison Avenue isn’t banging down my door? Fact is, Gabriel’s Ghost is what it is. No, I didn’t sit down one morning and say, hmm, the next book I’m writing will be geared towards women unfamiliar with nanotechnology. I wrote Sully and Chaz’s story with nary a thought to marketing or audience. I write ALL my books that way. I write my character’s stories. Period. Please don’t assume nefarious behind-the-scenes machinations on my part. If you want to know why I wrote a book, ask me.

And finally…

4 – ICK! The book has romance!

Answer – Yep, it does. The corollary to ICK is "It’s shelved in science fiction!" as if my books infect those around them on the shelves with some disgusting malady. The Urban Legend associated with this is that somehow Linnea Sinclair browbeat or bribed the powers that be at Bantam to shelve the books in science fiction, or that the author is in any way responsible for a book’s shelving. WE ARE NOT. I AM NOT. No one ever asked me where my books belong. If you have an issue with those who like romance and romantic subplots in their novels, do not demean, denigrate or damn those of us who do…and those of us who write it. We don’t put you down for what you like to read.

There are a few more but they’re pretty much variations on the above themes.
Point is this, and I’ve already said it several times above: ask me. Ask any author why they wrote the book they did, why their characters are such, why the plot took the twist it did. I’ve been blessed with some wonderful interviews—on line, in print, and in radio and television—where people took time to ascertain the facts and not just throw assumptions and accusations together. Ask.

And by the way, to the blogger who complained that Sully was a typical alpha male, he’s not. For one thing, I don’t write to archetypes. But if I did, Sully would be more gamma (poet, monk and warrior).

Just wanted to clear that up.

~Linnea

Empires, Dreams

Stayed up late last night, I did.

Empire Of Dreams was absolutely fascinating, to me, and to those with whom I watched it. I'm sure each one of us took something different away from it.

The insight that I appreciate most (at this moment) was the fact that the actor inside Darth Vader's helmet was pronouncing --and acting-- from one script, and Luke was reacting to another.

Now that really was the ultimate in saying one thing and meaning another... or of not being on the same page! I suppose it wasn't really much different from script management for Who Shot JR...? But it seemed deeper to this viewer.

I knew that Darth Vader's voice had been dubbed in later, but how cool it was to hear the difference in soundtrack when the original actor spoke. What a difference the "right" voice makes! Or the right howls. Wasn't it fascinating that Chewbacca originally had lines? Talking of Chewbacca, I greatly enjoyed the revelation that some of the movie makers were worried about the Wookie's lack of underwear. I'd noticed that uncivilized omission only the night before.

On Thursday night I tried to watch The Empire Strikes Back. I have it out from the library too, but it's a VCR and in almost unwatchably bad condition. Imagine my joy when it was on TV on Friday night. I was very pleased to see swordmaster Bob Anderson's name in the credits as a stunt double. (Recently I blogged about the account I'd read in By The Sword of why a genuine swordsman, not an actor, had to perform Darth Vader's fight with Luke.)

The music was something else I'd never really thought about--apart from the "declarative" Imperial theme for whenever Darth Vader stalked across the screen, like the wolf theme in Peter And The Wolf, only much more wicked.

How fascinating that the composer had recently finished the score for Jaws, where the
antagonist got the catchy, sinister theme music! What a twist for those of us accustomed to the Bond theme... the Here Comes The Hero refrain. When the movie music is really, really good, I don't notice it much, apart from the theme tunes. It's amusing what a difference a good orchestra makes to an aerial dogfight, isn't it?

I've watched a lot of The Making Of... documentaries, but I don't think I've grasped how much goes into making a great movie quite as vividly as I did last night, watching Empire Of Dreams.

What did you like best?

Best wishes,
Rowena Cherry

Life in the real world

I know I've missed some of my days. My only excuse is the holidays are upon us. With several deadlines such as books, getting the house decorated, getting my invitations for my party out, decorating my mother's house I've just been too frazzled to concentrate on anything at all.

But as my mind searches for conventient ways to do the decorating, such as wouldn't it be nice if your tree could just pop up out of the floor fully decorated? I've wondered...will our Christmas traditions survive into the future? You read historicals all the time with Christmas scenes (Let me recommend my own Windfall) but are there ever any holiday celebrations in our futuristics? Anyone ever read a book about a futuristic Christmas?

As our civilization moves out into space the Christmas story will go with it. But it will be interesting to see what the celebration will become.

Ideas anyone?

Living with Technology

Nobody in our family has a Playstation 3. (Our youngest son got a Nintendo Wii, which seemed to be less chaotic in its launch, not to mention more reasonably priced.) I got some amusement from reading the newspaper accounts of long lines camping out overnight for the Playstation. The hysteria became unfunny, though, when police had to quell outbreaks of violence at some locations. At least one store in this part of the state decided not to sell the system on launch day at all. What struck me most about the stories, however, was the account of a homeless woman walking along one of the waiting lines begging for change. She was quoted as saying she couldn't understand why people would be so silly as to sleep outside when they didn't have to and pay such an exorbitant amount of money for a "toy." Cue irony.

So, I pondered, how can I use this squirm-inducing story as a blog topic? Well, how about the role of high-tech in our daily lives? As a family, we've never been early adopters. (A statement that doesn't necessarily apply to our grown sons.) We tend to acquire the Next Big Thing after it's been tested on the market for a while. I can't comment on video games because I've never played them, but I can't imagine that even for something I really, really wanted I would stand in line on the first day or pay above retail price. (Who ARE these people who buy "flipped" Playstations on the Internet for thousands of dollars when they could get a new one at list price by waiting a few weeks?) And I'm not one bit interested in HDTV. The cheapest television at Best Buy plays programs just fine by my relaxed standards, and quantum levels better than the sets I watched as a kid. (Remember that extinct subspecies, the TV repairman?)

Some high-tech products, however, have changed my life so much for the better that I can hardly imagine how I lived without them. Remember when missing a TV program meant waiting for the rerun? When you couldn't see an old movie unless it was revived in your town's theater or broadcast on the local TV station? (How did film studies classes manage, I wonder?) When missing a phone call meant hoping they'd call back? When you couldn't get money while the bank was closed unless you could find a store willing to cash a check? (Before ATMs and universal acceptance of credit cards, each of our military moves involved serious preplanning and juggling to avoid being stranded with no means of buying daily necessities such as food until our newly opened local bank account in our new city of residence issued us checks the stores would accept.) When there was no Internet to use for requesting library books, ordering postage stamps, transferring funds between your bank accounts, buying products your local store didn't have in stock, reserving plane tickets, finding directions for a trip, or getting quick information on any topic? I can't guess what stage my writing career would have reached at this point in my life if I hadn't had the Internet to seek out writers' guidelines or communicate with publishers and fellow authors, not to mention that most of the publishers that have released my books wouldn't have existed in the first place (since they're e-pubs). The very existence of the computer has improved my writing to an unguessable degree, because not having to re-transcribe a whole manuscript for each set of changes means I'm far more willing to rewrite. I can tinker with a sentence over and over, without having to decided whether a contemplated small change is worth retyping a page. E-mail is a great boon, combining the best features of snail mail (you can think about what you want to say at leisure and revise it) and the telephone (you can usually get a fast reply) without the disadvantages (postal mail -- often not timely enough for the situation; phone -- you have to worry about disturbing the person and catching him/her at home or waiting for him/her to call back, plus you have to pay extra to talk to someone on the other side of the country or the world).

Good grief, there was a time when we didn't have a MICROWAVE! And, before that, there was an era when cars didn't have seat belts, or any music systems other than the radio. Also, while this doesn't exactly qualify as high-tech, packaged foods didn't bear lists of ingredients and nutritional content. To cite a high-tech advance in that area, consider the bar code. Although at first it was odd getting used to not having price tags on most groceries, soon it became pleasant to be able to move through the checkout line faster.

And then there's the cell phone. A mixed blessing, some people might say. :) I carry one and would hate to be deprived of it, but I don't use it for casual conversation, and I don't keep it turned on unless I've arranged in advance for somebody to call me for a particular purpose. In my worldview, the cell phone exists to make OUTGOING calls. When we need it, though, we REALLY need it. Before it existed, you'd have to search for a pay phone if your car broke down, or just to call home if you were delayed or make contact with a child who had to be picked up from an after-school activity. (It's often been remarked that high-tech devices such as this make a writer's job harder in some respects. If the heroine of your suspense novel carries a phone in her purse, how do you arrange for her to be stranded with no means of calling for help?) Remember how expensive our first hand-held calculators were? Today we can buy a smaller, far more versatile one in the supermarket stationery aisle for under $20. As an electronically published author, I'm waiting for a hand-held e-book reading device that's as cheap, durable, user-friendly, and ubiquitous as a calculator.

What wonders does the future hold? Already I'm seeing TV commercials for disk-shaped robots that vacuum or scrub the floors. I wouldn't think of paying the current price for them. Eventually, though, the day will come when they're as cheap and commonplace as computers are today. Then I'll get one. Will we ever see housecleaning robots that look, talk, and behave like human beings? Would we want them to? If they appeared too human, we'd have to consider the ethical quandary of whether they deserved individual rights, and as far as having cheap, unobtrusive domestic labor is concerned, we'd be back where we started. And as these new conveniences enter our lives and transform from luxuries to necessities (some public schools, not to mention colleges, already seem to assume that all students have computer access), what is our responsibility for ensuring their availability to everyone, not just the middle- and upper-class educated elite?

Nothing terribly original in these musings about the advantages and challenges of high-tech, but hey, it's a holiday. :) Happy Thanksgiving to all who celebrate it!

Come Play In My Backyard

Folks:

Here's an interesting statistic:

In the film industry, it is believed that:

Happy Endings make more money than any other type. (Protag. attains a goal PLUS a need.)

Down or Tragic endings win appreciation from critics. (Protag attains neither a goal nor a need.)

Ironic endings are most often picked for Oscar attention. (Protag attains either goal or need)

I was told this about the book industry -- but I had no idea it applied to films. I never analyzed the Oscar winners, and I don't read "critics." (I REVIEW books, not criticise them).

I've always thought that you bring your story to it's PROPER -- internally consistent -- ending and you have a chance at any or all 3 of the above, money, fame, or glory.

But apparently that's not so, according to screenwriting lore.

Therefore, before starting to craft an IDEA into a story, complete with protagonist, antagonist, conflict, beginning, middle, end and resolution of the conflict, you really should think hard about the ENDING.

What a backwards way of looking at it.

Most Romances -- even Alien Romances -- have "happy" endings in that the main characters find true happiness, even if they've switched partners a few times during the story.

So Romance is not always about attaining a GOAL -- i.e. you don't have a "happy ending" unless the protagonist attains their goal and also gets what they really need in life. A Romance ends where the protags get what they NEED -- and only sometimes what they thought they were going after.

In fact, the most interesting Romances are ones where both protags shift their goals during the story and only gradually discover their own needs -- and the needs of their S. O.

Could that be why very few serious and complex Romances make it to the screen?

Romances should be cheap to make -- well, not Alien Romances or grand Historical Romances (costume pieces), but contemporary, A.U. or even most Paranormals would be filmable.

But to justify the expense of making a film -- (which in my not at all humble opinion is what Alien Romance should be! TV and Film is the right medium for this wonderful sub-genre) -- you need:

a) 4 audience demographics -- this is from SAVE THE CAT! by Blake Snyder but he didn't invent it:
Men over 25
Men under 25
Women over 25
Women under 25

Believe it or not, that's how Hollywood looks at us.

Men under 25 are THE core film audience courted most by Hollywood because they go to films more than anyone else -- AND they bring their dates to films.

So if it doesn't interest "men under 25" when presented as a poster, your story won't be made into a high profile film with the Stars you might envision in the lead roles.

Romances aren't seen as inherently interesting to men under 25.

BUT SCIENCE FICTION IS!!!!

So the SF-Romance should be a classic 4-Quadrant genre!

So if you can create an SF-Romance with blazing action, (Think TERMINATOR or STARMAN) you can write a novel that will be made into a blockbuster film.

All you have to do is craft a totally HAPPY ENDING with maybe a whiff of IRONY onto an SF-ROMANCE to have the kind of audience "reach" and Awards Potential to get a big budget with Big Stars wanting an Oscar. You could rival STAR WARS for opening weekend boxoffice.

OK, we have 6 dynamite alien romance writers here. Can we come up with a dynamite CONCEPT with an ending like that for a standard 110 page screenplay?

When I started in fandom, we did a thing called a ROUND ROBIN -- in fact my very first fiction writing that got me started so that I couldn't stop was a ROUND ROBIN where an alternate-I was my character.

So just for fun, I have an opening Round Robin challenge for each writer to add to in outline here. Let's see if we can fulfill the Hollywood formula.

Here are the elements we need:

CONCEPT LOGLINE: An interstellar dog catcher meets her match.

Opening Image: Inara stands over a huge cage made of light-bars. Within is a dark, dirty, vicious and angry creature.

Someone off-shot says, "What among all the stars is THAT?!"

Inara, panting discheveled and scratched, shrugs: "Well, my mom told me not to take a job as an xeno-petcatcher. I wonder how she knew?"

The howling, crazed nameless creature in the cage says: "Maybe my mom told her!" Then its gyrations finally release the catch and it scrambles out and away.

OK, WHO WILL ADD A LINE OR THREE TO THAT?

Before this thing could be written, we need to know:

END OF ACT ONE (p 25) major climax into the middle of the film which is the longest part, 60 pages, fully half the 110 pages. The middle is the chase, danger, cliff-hangars, and bonding between the two reluctant soulmates who will become lovers.

END OF ACT TWO (p 85) since this needs a happy ending, p 75-85 have to be the absolute nadir, Inara's most devastating failure, utter and complete loss of everything valuable to her with no apparent way out of the trap she's in. (she can't BE RESCUED - she has to invent an astonishing and successful strategy to get herself out of this, as does her soulmate).

ENDING: This has to be a HAPPY ENDING - where Inara and her soulmate both reach their goals and also attain something they really need, something other than the goal.

TAG: the denoument, page 110 -- the FINAL IMAGE.

Well, if the opening image is a dogcatcher's cage, the final image has to include that, but changed in some way.

QUESTION: is the mad creature in the cage Inara's soulmate -- or is it like a parrot, reciting something it's owner taught it - and the owner is Inara's soulmate.

Perhaps if Inara recaptures the creature, the law says it has to be put to death, so the owner is racing Inara and blocking her every move, to recapture the creature first? Maybe it's a circus creature? Maybe the creature is a human being out where humans are thought to be animals?

Want to play in my backyard?

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.simegen.com/jl/

Come Play In My Backyard

Folks:

Here's an interesting statistic:

In the film industry, it is believed that:

Happy Endings make more money than any other type. (Protag. attains a goal PLUS a need.)

Down or Tragic endings win appreciation from critics. (Protag attains neither a goal nor a need.)

Ironic endings are most often picked for Oscar attention. (Protag attains either goal or need)

I was told this about the book industry -- but I had no idea it applied to films. I never analyzed the Oscar winners, and I don't read "critics." (I REVIEW books, not criticise them).

I've always thought that you bring your story to it's PROPER -- internally consistent -- ending and you have a chance at any or all 3 of the above, money, fame, or glory.

But apparently that's not so, according to screenwriting lore.

Therefore, before starting to craft an IDEA into a story, complete with protagonist, antagonist, conflict, beginning, middle, end and resolution of the conflict, you really should think hard about the ENDING.

What a backwards way of looking at it.

Most Romances -- even Alien Romances -- have "happy" endings in that the main characters find true happiness, even if they've switched partners a few times during the story.

So Romance is not always about attaining a GOAL -- i.e. you don't have a "happy ending" unless the protagonist attains their goal and also gets what they really need in life. A Romance ends where the protags get what they NEED -- and only sometimes what they thought they were going after.

In fact, the most interesting Romances are ones where both protags shift their goals during the story and only gradually discover their own needs -- and the needs of their S. O.

Could that be why very few serious and complex Romances make it to the screen?

Romances should be cheap to make -- well, not Alien Romances or grand Historical Romances (costume pieces), but contemporary, A.U. or even most Paranormals would be filmable.

But to justify the expense of making a film -- (which in my not at all humble opinion is what Alien Romance should be! TV and Film is the right medium for this wonderful sub-genre) -- you need:

a) 4 audience demographics -- this is from SAVE THE CAT! by Blake Snyder but he didn't invent it:
Men over 25
Men under 25
Women over 25
Women under 25

Believe it or not, that's how Hollywood looks at us.

Men under 25 are THE core film audience courted most by Hollywood because they go to films more than anyone else -- AND they bring their dates to films.

So if it doesn't interest "men under 25" when presented as a poster, your story won't be made into a high profile film with the Stars you might envision in the lead roles.

Romances aren't seen as inherently interesting to men under 25.

BUT SCIENCE FICTION IS!!!!

So the SF-Romance should be a classic 4-Quadrant genre!

So if you can create an SF-Romance with blazing action, (Think TERMINATOR or STARMAN) you can write a novel that will be made into a blockbuster film.

All you have to do is craft a totally HAPPY ENDING with maybe a whiff of IRONY onto an SF-ROMANCE to have the kind of audience "reach" and Awards Potential to get a big budget with Big Stars wanting an Oscar. You could rival STAR WARS for opening weekend boxoffice.

OK, we have 6 dynamite alien romance writers here. Can we come up with a dynamite CONCEPT with an ending like that for a standard 110 page screenplay?

When I started in fandom, we did a thing called a ROUND ROBIN -- in fact my very first fiction writing that got me started so that I couldn't stop was a ROUND ROBIN where an alternate-I was my character.

So just for fun, I have an opening Round Robin challenge for each writer to add to in outline here. Let's see if we can fulfill the Hollywood formula.

Here are the elements we need:

CONCEPT LOGLINE: An interstellar dog catcher meets her match.

Opening Image: Inara stands over a huge cage made of light-bars. Within is a dark, dirty, vicious and angry creature.

Someone off-shot says, "What among all the stars is THAT?!"

Inara, panting discheveled and scratched, shrugs: "Well, my mom told me not to take a job as an xeno-petcatcher. I wonder how she knew?"

The howling, crazed nameless creature in the cage says: "Maybe my mom told her!" Then its gyrations finally release the catch and it scrambles out and away.

OK, WHO WILL ADD A LINE OR THREE TO THAT?

Before this thing could be written, we need to know:

END OF ACT ONE (p 25) major climax into the middle of the film which is the longest part, 60 pages, fully half the 110 pages. The middle is the chase, danger, cliff-hangars, and bonding between the two reluctant soulmates who will become lovers.

END OF ACT TWO (p 85) since this needs a happy ending, p 75-85 have to be the absolute nadir, Inara's most devastating failure, utter and complete loss of everything valuable to her with no apparent way out of the trap she's in. (she can't BE RESCUED - she has to invent an astonishing and successful strategy to get herself out of this, as does her soulmate).

ENDING: This has to be a HAPPY ENDING - where Inara and her soulmate both reach their goals and also attain something they really need, something other than the goal.

TAG: the denoument, page 110 -- the FINAL IMAGE.

Well, if the opening image is a dogcatcher's cage, the final image has to include that, but changed in some way.

QUESTION: is the mad creature in the cage Inara's soulmate -- or is it like a parrot, reciting something it's owner taught it - and the owner is Inara's soulmate.

Perhaps if Inara recaptures the creature, the law says it has to be put to death, so the owner is racing Inara and blocking her every move, to recapture the creature first? Maybe it's a circus creature? Maybe the creature is a human being out where humans are thought to be animals?

Want to play in my backyard?

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.simegen.com/jl/

Jurassic Passions: A Look at Character and Motivation

A dinosaur came into my online classroom a while back, courtesy of one of my students, Celia. Now, let me make clear right up front that I was teaching "Investigative Methodology For Writers" online, so that at best, the dinosaur was an E-mail-osaurus Rex.

But he was a useful bugger and I'm glad Celia brought him in. I'll tell you why.

He was a motivated dinosaur. I named him Celia's Jurassic Passion.

The class was discussing 'motives' and the dinosaur was an example Celia used to illustrate a fictional character's hobby: "A passion so intense that his thinking is temporarily turned off."

Passion. Habit. Achilles' Heel. Motive. In this particular example, this character is tricked into revealing his true identity because of his fascination with dinosaurs. He couldn't stay away from a specific exhibit. This one last shred of his real self gives him away.

Fiction, you say?

Naw. Really happens.

One of the interesting things about a character, or a person's, motivations is that it's often a key issue both in fiction writing and investigative work. It's life imitating art, and art imitating life.

In the case of Celia's Jurassic Passion, we have a unique flavor of motive that works well for a PI and damned beautifully for a writer. It's that one unattainable goal that drives a writer's protagonist or antagonist. That hones a conflict line. That keeps a reader turning page.

For the PI, it's the road sign saying: He Went Thataway.

In any really good PI work, a PI has to climb deeply into the psyche of subject of the investigation. She has to do more than find out the facts. She has to understand what motivated the subject to lie, to steal, to philander, to connive, to run. She has to know what drives him, and what drives him is called motivation.

And it has to be something strong enough, deep enough, to make him go against the norm. To take the risk. To take it all with him or, conversely, leave it all behind.

In an effort not to violate the dictums of "believable characters", many writers seem to choose mundane motivations. One hundred per cent plausible, believable motivations. A drunk driver mows down Alphonse's granny in the middle of Main Street, so Alphonse goes on a rampage against all drunk drivers.

But after ten-plus years as a private investigator, I can tell you that it's not the logic or the believability of the motive that is the crux, but the intensity. I have seen people take actions for some remarkably stupid reasons, in my estimation.

But to them, those reasons were everything. Their own Jurassic Passion.

Intensity is what fuels the motive. Because the motives are, for the most part, as instinctual and primal as, well, a dinosaur, living deep in the very beginnings of our psyche. And often just a beastly.

Many writers develop only lofty, altruistic and logical motives for their characters in the belief that the noble goal is universally understood. In my humble estimation, those writers are missing out on one of the most fascinating elements of the human psyche. Our ability to defy reason, ignore logic, damn the torpedoes and go full speed ahead because we are so blindsided by our passions we can see no other way of responding.

Give me Grieving Alphonse who isn't raging against drunk drivers but against television weather reporters. For it was the TV weather report that made Granny leave her humble home that day and cross the street to buy an umbrella. The drunk driver is simply, in Alphonse's primally passionate mind, a bit player.

As a reader, a passionately illogical motive gives me the better hook, the better twist, the bigger surprise factor when all is finally revealed on the last page.

It also, whether I like it or not, draws me into a shared identity with the character. We all have our Jurassic Passions buried somewhere inside. And motives stem from our passions. The one thing we cannot live with. The one thing we cannot live without.

As an investigator, I sought out motives as my pinpoint flashlight on a roadmap through the winding, bumpy terrain of misinformation. As a writer, you can develop a character's motives and passions as a pinpoint flashlight to zig and zag your reader over a similar emotional terrain.

It's been said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. It's only fitting, then, that the guy driving the bus to hell is none other than E-mail-osaurus Rex, your friendly and illogical Jurassic Passion.

~Linnea
www.linneasinclair.com

Insufficient Mating Material--embarrassing things to ask dignified people

Reviews are starting to come in for Insufficient Mating Material, and --much too late-- I'm having visions of readers sidling up to librarians and whispering "Do you have Insufficient Mating Material?"

I never thought of that before. My grandfather, who was mischievous, used to amuse himself by tapping the Fish menu and asking impassive-faced waiters slightly ungrammatical questions that involved the words "are soles?"

No doubt my Grandpa would have taken great delight in choosing his victim, and demanding my book in the most inappropriate wording possible.

Best wishes,
Rowena Cherry


Utterly enthralling

A year ago Tarrant-Arragon wouldn’t believe he was going to set his sister up… I loved this book, and I know Insufficient Mating Material is a book you will not want to miss either.~ Rose, Romanceatheart.com


What is it like, exactly, when two gods go head to head?

Stellar wit, wonderful characters and amazing research into basic and not so basic survival techniques make for a very real and relatable
environment for the prince and princess. This was without a doubt one
of my favorite reads of 2006! ~ Kenda Montgomery

Interspecies Cooperation

I'm almost finished rereading WIZARDS AT WAR, the latest in Diane Duane's "Young Wizards" series. In this novel the teenage protagonists of the series, Kit and Nita, have to work with other wizards to save the universe from an abnormal proliferation of "dark matter." Their team comprises four Earth-human adolescents (including Kit's non-magical sister), a humanoid prince from a distant star system, a giant bug, an intelligent plant who looks like an ambulatory Christmas tree, Kit's dog (who has some magical gifts), and a sentient laptop computer. The larger group of Earth wizards includes whales and cats as well as human people. This delightful picture of interspecies cooperation reminds me of Madeleine L'Engle's A WRINKLE IN TIME and its sequels. L'Engle's human characters, at various times, work with cherubim, a unicorn, a friendly snake, assorted extraterrestrials, microscopic creatures within a small boy's body, and three angelic beings disguised as eccentric old ladies. James White's books set in a hospital on a space station show the protagonist, a human doctor, treating patients from many different planets. I enjoy stories that feature human beings and varied types of aliens seeing behind their mutual strangeness to the "soul," rejoicing in both their likenesses and their differences.

C. S. Lewis' OUT OF THE SILENT PLANET takes the hero, Ransom, to Mars, which he finds inhabited by three different intelligent species. A Martian native expresses amazement at learning Earth has only one. How, he asks, can we objectively evaluate our own thought processes if we can't compare them to thought that "floats on different blood"? I use this phrase in the title of my literary survey DIFFERENT BLOOD: THE VAMPIRE AS ALIEN from Amber Quill Press (www.amberquill.com).

Lewis' friend J. R. R. Tolkien says in "On Fairy Stories" that one of the universal human wishes fulfilled by fairy tales is the desire to communicate with other species. The talking animals in folklore vicariously heal the wound of our separation from the other creatures in our world. I find similar consolation in stories of friendship or love between human characters and members of intelligent nonhuman races. The Star Trek principle of IDIC, "Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations," celebrates bridging the gulf between species to form multi-species alliances, friendships, or intimate bonds. Which raises the question of how faithfully we live out this ideal in our mundane lives. Do we science fiction and fantasy fans typically rejoice in the other races and cultures on our own planet as wholeheartedly as we hope we would rejoice in elves and extraterrestrials? I must freely admit that most of my appreciation occurs at a distance; I grew up in a suburban WASP environment and have lived mostly in that kind of cultural context throughout my life. Therefore, my images of the ethnic groups with which I don't come into frequent contact tend, I'm sure, to be romanticized.

Susan Kearney News

Hi,

I'm pleased to announce I just sold two more books to Tor. In 2008 SOLAR HEAT will be available , my sequel to ISLAND HEAT and in the future this series will connect to my Rystani warrior series that began with THE CHALLENGE.

And I'm also now writing romantic suspense. The first book KISS ME DEADLY will be out this summer and I'll be writing the sequel this year. I'm very pleased to be writing in two genres. It keeps me fresh as a writer. Right now I'm having a blast with SOLAR HEAT. The book is back in space and my heroine is trapped, the hero is searching for her. It's time for her to save herself!!


Guess I'll get back to writing.
SueK.

More than you want to know!

Folks:

I've been very busy this week with mundane life, but also several writing projects active at once.

But I got a nice surprise that might interest some of you Trek fans.

There's a new e-zine, Sci Fi Studios Magazine just started. And I'm in the first issue!

Long story:

A few years ago COMMUNICATOR MAGAZINE -- a newstand slick focused on Star Trek -- was in the process of doing an article on me as part of a features series. They did one on Shirley Maiewski -- long time head of the Star Trek Welcommittee who died recently -- and had just done one on Joan Winston when the Magazine folded.

I saw the fellow who ran COMMUNICATOR at a con or two, did some panels with him, and he still had hope that COMMUNICATOR would re-launch. But so far it hasn't.

However, he is now involved in the new e-zine for Sci Fi Studios (which is connected with a lot of Hollywood pros who love Trek, endorsed by Rod Roddenberry, too) , and they contacted me to do an interview by email which I did. That was months ago and I'd all but forgotten it.

Last week, I got an email announcing the first issue - almost didn't go look at it - found a minute, browsed over, and Lo! There's a picture of me composited from a still taken during the interview I did which is in the documentary Trekkies2.

The interview with me is there, too.

Here's the ISSUE ONE of the new online magazine

http://scifi-studios.com/magazine/magcover1.htm


http://scifi-studios.com/magazine/ is the index page.


http://www.scifi-studios.com/magazine/content/view/75/26/ is the article itself.

This website is unique and a ground-breaker. They are Industry pros who are reaching out to involve FANS in the creation and production of actual, real SF the way we like it.

I really hope some Alien Romance writers get involved. I just have too many projects on my desk right now to be able to DO what I'd like to see done on that website.

So take a look at it.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.simegen.com/jl/

101 Uses for Email Spammers

This is a blog about writing.
This is a blog about how authors sometimes use unusual sources for characters' names.
This is a blog about how great minds think alike.

Now that I've set the stage...welcome to my latest insanity. We all get email spam. Nothing can really turn a good day on a nasty edge then to be trying to get a manuscript done, waiting for feedback from your beloved critique partners, logging into your email program and you sit there for five frikkin' minutes whilst oodles of spam downloads and is snagged--one by one--by your spam filter.

Dink-kaching. Dink-kaching. Dink-kaching. (My spam filter makes little noises so I know it's actually earning the bucks I paid for it). Dink-kaching. I usually at this point go to the kitchen, brew another cup of cappuccino and return to my desk just in time for the last of the dink-kachings.

Then I noticed something while I was scanning the spam folder just in case a lovely fan mail note was erroneously dink-kachinged: spammers have started using some really neat-o peachy keen fun names as senders.

I've started saving them. Do I have a problem or what? But I've started saving them because I thought at some point they might make a fun addition to a book as a character. It would certainly save me the time and headache of creating a name.

Because, you see, I spend a lot of time creating a character's name. I listen to its melody, its cadence. I work with is masculine/feminine principles. I want it to correctly reflect my character's, well, character.

So imagine, if you will, just what these lovely characters would be like (and I'd LOVE to see your feedback--give them stories and careers and post them here!):

Headley Knoblock
Paneling L. Crib
Ceased H. Comfy
Fox O. Ethereal
Dillon Furze
Myopic U. Romeo
Repetitive H. Neurons
Hoose J. Rochester
Shocking H. Separates
Hensel F. Chowdhury
Nosedives H. Cursory
Preppier S. Barometers
Hunter Valentine (I really like this one--I think he'd make a great hard-drinkin', gun-totin' PI!)
Puppet C. Zambians
Parsifal Gandara
Nails H. Quitted
Bluford Q. Longmire
Zvonko Belvin

and that's just in the past month and it's not even all of them.

Brilliant, eh?

So in my whimsy I email author-buddy Susan Grant. And guess what? (Here comes the Great Minds part). She's doing the same thing! She's not only saving spammers names but she already USED one in an upcoming release. The character? Tibor Frix.

Now it's up to you to make some good use of annoying spammers. Tell me--in ten sentences or less--about Zvonko Belvin and Nosedives H. Cursory, et al. Let's see how creative you can get (but keep it short, eh? Ten sentences or less).


Admiringly yours,
~Linnea
www.linneasinclair.com

The best swordfighting scenes

What do Pierce Brosnan in Die Another Day, Roger Moore in Moonraker, Sean Connery in Highlander, Chris O'Donnell in The Three Musketeers, Catherine Zeta Jones, Anthony Hopkins, and Antonio Banderas in The Mask of Zorro, and Liv Tyler in LOTR have in common?

I found this fascinating!

According to Richard Cohen in By The Sword, the sword fighting consultant for all those great movie swordfighting scenes was Bob Anderson. A tidbit that interested me most was that it was Bob Anderson himself in the Darth Vader costume during that steamy light saber duel with Luke in The Empire Strikes Back.


Apparently, in order to keep the steam-effect from freezing Han Solo, the stage had to be kept very hot indeed, which was especially uncomfortable for a man in a helmet and long black robes.

None of this --movie trivia-- is especially helpful to me in my research for a swordfighting hero for my next alien djinn romance, but it gives me a new respect for Hollywood, and a new perspective on the "romantic" versus the "swashbuckling" versus the "pain of it" schools of movie swordfighting.

My next title is Knight's Fork. It's not about a Retiarius! Although it is Rhett's story.

Best wishes,

Rowena

Shooting Star...Ruben's crash

Ruben set the angle to enter the atmosphere and searched for his water bottle. It wasn’t in its usual place and he recalled that he had forgotten to fill it before he left Oasis. He’d had other things on his mind. He’d have to go aft to find some but the prickling on the back of his neck kept him in place. With yoke in hand wondered why he had not been hailed from below.
“Anything on the com?” he asked.
“I’d be sure to let you know,” Eli replied.
She was definitely pouting.
Surely they had some sort of security set up on the planet. He opened his hailing frequencies.
“See if you can raise someone,” he instructed.
“I have,” Eli replied.
“Do it again.”
Next thing you know she…it…was going to expect presents.
“Standard hailing frequencies,” Ruben added. At least he was doing his part. There was no way he could be coming in unannounced.
“Warning,” Eli said. “Unknown craft approaching from below.” A shrill jangle from the com let him know that she…it…wasn’t making it up.
“This is Shooting Star calling the planet Lavign,” Ruben yelled into the com as he punched off the warning beacon. “Repeat Shooting Star calling Lavign. Request landing coordinates.”
Nothing. Ruben did a quick visual of the deepening sky. He was coming in at a glorious sunset. He could just see the curve of the sun dipping over the edge of the planet and the orange-pink brilliance of the sky above it.
It reminded him of Oasis. Clean and pure.
“Are you sure there’s something out there?” he asked.
“Yes. But if you don’t believe me you can check for yourself.”
His com showed a blip. There was another craft out there, somewhere. It should be close enough for a visual but a crafty pilot could hide in the glare from the sun and use it’s reflection as a cloak.
He’d done it himself, many a time….
“Repeat Shooting Star calling planet Lavign. I am unarmed and seeking coordinates for landing.”
No response. The sun, now gone, gave way to a clear black sky.
“Show me the geopoll.” Ruben barked out.
It was a handy tool to have when smuggling, especially when he was trying to avoid interaction with the Senate outposts. Infrared under the three dimensional image showed sparse population of human and animal. The terrain was rolling with mountains showing in the distance. No industry showed of any kind. There were no lights sparkling from below to show the location of a city and no power blip to show an energy source.
The night skies, brightly lit with millions of stars, gave the appearance that he could reach through the plexi and gather a handful to keep. The absence of light below gave the illusion that they were close and tempting, a treasure to be collected.
Maybe he should have done some more research before he took off on his quest to find his brother. It made more sense than just going on his gut…
Another alarm went off with a whoop. “We’ve been locked,” Eli said calmly.
Someone was targeting him. Where was it? What was after him?
Ruben didn’t have time to think about it as the single blip on his screen suddenly split in two. He’d been fired upon. He pulled the Shooting Star into a quick roll to the port side and the ship responded gracefully.
From the corner of his eye Ruben caught a quick flash as the missile passed on by and exploded in the atmosphere. The light from the blast bounced off something solid.
There was another ship out there. His screen showed the blip was somewhere above him.
“My sensors indicate that the other ship is now above us,” Eli said.
“Yeah, I already figured that out sweetheart.”
What he wouldn’t give to have Shaun sitting up in the turret gun right now. The empty co-pilot seat beside him reminded him more of his solitude than he cared to admit. Maybe he should fix it, once this ride was over with.
He flipped on the screen that gave him a visual link with the turret and pushed the yoke forward so the screen was aimed towards the atmosphere above.
He saw it on the screen. The absence of light. The craft that was after him was as black as the night sky. Deliberately. Whoever was flying it did not want it to be seen. . It was a clever idea and would be handy on a cloudy night but tonight when the stars were dazzling in their brilliance the craft blocked them from view.
So what was the problem? If it was planetary defense then why the need for camouflage? They were within their rights to protect their skies from invaders although some might have issue with it.
Kind of hard to argue the point if you were dead however.
The back of his neck told him that it was not planetary defense. Something was going on here. And just maybe it was related to what he…felt…about his brother. He came here looking for answers and obviously someone did not want the questions asked.
“Look for a place to land,” he said.
He needed to get away from his attackers. And he better do it quick before whoever it was figured out that he was about to fly up…
Too late. Ruben caught the impression of a dive but it was hard to track the ship visually once it started its counter measures.
“Warning. Warning. Attack imminent,” Eli said.
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
He should have taken it out when he had the chance. But it wasn’t as if the Shooting Star was a Falcon and fully loaded with armament.
The blip on his screen told him his pursuer was still there, and he’d better do something quick.
Where are you?
Ruben didn’t bother with a visual check as he armed his missiles. All these years and he’d never used them. He never had a reason. Shaun and the turret gun had gotten them out of more scrapes than anything. He couldn’t even say for sure the last time he’d bothered to check the proton chambers.
It was time to make his move. The blip was behind him now and coming fast.
Too fast…Ruben’s curse exploded from his lips at the exact same time that he took the yoke and kicked in a quick burst of hyperion. Another second’s delay and he’d be a meteor shower, falling to the planet below.
The Shooting Star had taken a hit.
He was losing pressure in the cargo bay.
“Pressure leak. Cargo bay.”
Ruben slapped a button on the com. That would shut her up. He didn’t need any help communicating with the Shooting Star. He knew exactly what she was capable of.
“Come on baby,” he urged the ship as he fought for control. He knew the Air was purging behind the sealed doors and also knew that if he’d been in the stratosphere that he would be nothing more than an imploded mass of metal right now.
He was going to have to ditch.
But not without a fight.
The hyperion burst had taken him out of range but not for long. He knew the mysterious dark ship would be closing in on him for the kill.
“I hope you’ve got something left sweetheart.”
Ruben punched the dials on his com. He blew his spare tank, knowing that the gases would form a harmless cerulean cloud in the pristine oxygen of the planet. It would also make his attacker think he was on his last legs, which he was…
So why should I let them…they…it…
Who are these guys?
He couldn’t have more than a few seconds left. Ruben jerked back on the yoke and the Shooting Star pushed her curved nose into the Air.
She’s heavy…
Ruben watched the blip on his screen as he silently urged his craft upwards. He knew he only had one chance before she gave out on him.
NOW!
Ruben threw the lever above his head as his pursuer flew into the cloud, right beneath and behind his position. He felt the shudder as the cargo hold separated from the module that held the cockpit, his personal quarters and the mechanical operations of the Shooting Star.
Like a bomb the hold fell, straight out of the sky, its trajectory right on target.
“Yes!” Ruben whooped as he felt the explosion beneath. It was more than he could hope for.
The answering shudder from the Shooting Star was not part of the celebration. Alarms sounded, more noise to distract him.
“Shut up!” Ruben barked.
It had to be shrapnel. The noise was enough to kill him. If he survived this…
After I survive this…
He was going to do some serious work on his systems. Maybe he should go ahead and take the next step in his voice data. Let Eli talk sexy to him. Maybe even give her a feminine name so she…it…could whisper sweet things to him while he was in cryo.
“You’d be waking up in a state too,” he said out loud as if to assure himself that he was still alive. For the moment. “And there’d be no one available to warm your sheets.”
Yeah, that gave him something to live for…
He didn’t have time to admire the ball of flame that shot up from the ground below as his enemy exploded upon contact.
“Sorry,” Ruben muttered as an apology to the inhabitants below. It was all he could offer at the moment. He had his own crash too avoid.
As if he could. He summoned the geopoll again with the flip of a switch. There was a clearing ahead. Unfortunately it was in the same vicinity as the crash. So now he’d have it to avoid, along with the dense forest and the mountains that took a sudden rise.
“I hope there’s no one out for an evening stroll,” he said.
If there was, they were in for a show. Ruben said a silent prayer as he lowered his emergency landing gear. What was left of the Shooting Star was designed for a quick getaway and a bay landing. Ruben was certain of his skills and knew his craft like he knew his body, but a drop like a stone out of the sky landing was something that he’d never tried before.
He only had one chance to get it right….
“Come on baby,” he urged as he saw the treetops getting closer. If only he could make it to the clearing he had a chance of not ripping her belly out.
He felt the popping of the tree tops as he skirted along and then dropped lower, willing the craft on just by sheer will power.
And then just as suddenly he was there and realized he’d run out of room faster than he thought. He was headed straight for the ball of fire that was all that was left of his enemy.
He jerked her nose up and the engines stalled. The Shooting Star fell to the earth, landing on her tail with a thud before she toppled over.
Ruben catapulted from his chair and slammed against the co-pilots seat before being thrown on the com. Pain exploded in his side and in his ankle as his eyes tried to focus through the plexi on something dark and strange looking huddled on the ground as he felt himself falling towards the earth with his ship. The entire clearing was aglow with the light from the fire but for him, the light was fading fast. The impact of the ship hitting the earth threw him to the deck and the world went dark.