Fear of completion

First, a point that SO needs to be made. Mozilla Firefox has a built-in spell check. Do you know how freaking awesome that is for those of us that are still spelling-challenged? I SUCK at spelling. My laptop does not have Firefox on it. I'm still running IE. (shudder). I could spell check if I wanted to. I don't wanna.

It's late. I'm tired and I've been sick for over a week. I'm staring listlessly at the computer screen. I know I have to get the crew of the Hudson from deep space to their destination planet and that it needs to happen soon.

Here's the thing: The beginning and end of this book have been written, and re-written, for years. It's just the middle chapters, the intervening 4 months of the character's lives, that have had me stumped. *I* know how these characters develop their relationships - acrimonious and otherwise- because they have lived in my head for some 15 odd years. While I would love to be able to pluck them from my crowded brain and plop them on the page (or screen) in front of you, the technology to do so just doesn't exist. I have to make these people come alive for you through words - and words are HARD, y'all.

So I'm stuck. And, while quite literally navel gazing, I've had to admit that part of me is really afraid of how nearly finished this book is. It's SO close. If it does ever get "finished", though, then I will have to face up to some hard truths. I have to put it in front of my husband, my best friend, my family.

I'm really not sure I'm up to disappointing everyone.

It's kind of nice, having folks believe I can do something. I've been dabbling with fan fiction writing. It's easy (stock characters! short plot lines! smut!) and doesn't tax my abilities - or lack there of. I can get instant feedback and it is 99% positive. That's not because my writing is necessarily good, though. People reading fan fiction don't generally take the time to log-in and leave nasty comments about bad writing. There's a LOT of fan fiction out there. If you don't like a particular work, or author, you just go back to the index and find a new sample. So, yes, I've gotten some nice reviews that make me feel glowy. Fat lot of good that does me professionally.

I should probably finish this book. If for no other reason, it allows those I care about to be honest and say "Yeah, you know what? Turns out you kind of suck at this. Maybe find something else to do with your life while you still can?"

The husband thinks it would be funny of me to leave this post incomplete. Marketing majors are cute that way.

Going to try and sleep now. I'll get back to work tomorrow. Maybe.

Dremiks as Space Opera

I used to wince when people described my first novel, Dremiks, as a space opera. The term made me feel tawdry and seemed to cheapen my writing. I’ve come to embrace the description, though. Opera, in all its mediums, deals with the emotions of the human condition. If I had to summarize the work I’ve been struggling with all these years, it would be just that: an examination of human interaction and behavior and the contrasts it presents with alien races.

So much of science-fiction and fantasy futuristic fiction assumes that man overcomes his inherent tendencies toward violence, xenophobia, and avarice. I’ll admit that at the tender age of 13, when I started writing Dremiks, I subscribed to that ideal as well. Surely by the time man conquered inter-galactic travel we would be kinder, smarter, more noble. The slap-in-the-face that is day-to-day adult life made me cynical in my writing as well as my political out-look. Dremiks has evolved from a giggling teenage short story to an imagination of the continued war between man’s demons and angels. The setting is still deep-space and most of the character names are the same, but that is where the similarities end.

There are elements of romance involved in the novel. I’m a romantic at heart. I find it difficult to believe that a group of people thrown into the unknown and living together for over a year would not develop some intimacies. It is far more un-realistic to assume that all officers and crew of a starship would remain celibate and platonic in their relationships than it is to let human nature take its course. There it is again- that basic belief that man has not changed so very much, despite our technological and sociological advances. Of course part of my belief that men and women (or any other pairing you choose to make) naturally fall in love, or lust, while working together is personal bias. I met my husband in college while we both worked in the same dorm.

There’s betrayal, lust, deception, love, life, and death in this novel. I try to interject light-hearted moments because no one’s life is wall-to-wall drama. While I hope the adrenaline junkie reader will find enough action to keep his interest, Dremiks is not a militaristic, space-battle, novel along the lines of Battlestar Galactica. You’ll be three quarters of the way through the book before you find a character wielding a gun. (A few knives make earlier appearances. Stabbings are fun!)

Here is a short excerpt dealing with some of the themes I’ve just discussed. For reference, the commanding officer of the spaceship Hudson is Captain Brett Hill. His executive officer and chief pilot is Commander Margaret (Maggie) O’Connell. This scene takes place half-way through the book. The setting is the officer’s mess (dining room).


“So what do you think, Cap’n?”

Brett sipped his water. When he glanced sideways at O’Connell his lids drooped slightly and his left eyebrow rose a fraction. A quirk of his lips, so fleeting it was possible the others never saw, let Maggie know that he had noticed the shortened, more familiar, form of address.

“Do I think it was inherent nobility that brought us out here?” He shook his head. “Maybe. I don’t call it nobility, though. I think it’s our innate human need to champion the underdog. We are constant optimists. We’re the emotional descendents of the caveman who stood defiant in the front of the wooly mammoth. We rebuild cities at the base of Vesuvius, get back on the bicycle when we fall off, whack that hornet’s nest every spring. Humans cheer for the couldn’t be, believe in the shouldn’t be. We love causes; the harder, the more lost they are, the more we love them.

“Is that nobility? Maybe. Maybe it’s a pernicious genetic defect that makes our species susceptible to shared delusion. What ever it is, it keeps life interesting.”

Welcome

I wanted a separate blog to share my writing. I'm not sure, yet, if I'll use this forum, or format, to market my novel. For now this is a place to share short stories, highlights from Dremiks, and fan-fiction.

Please keep in mind that all work here is protected under US copyright.

Since reviews are the author's drug of choice, comments will be left open. However, annoying trolls will be smashed will full-on red-head fury.