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« Show all entries for DECEMBER 2008
Thursday, 18 December 2008 03:23:39
I was asked about a week ago to write a fifteen minute short to be used in a film grouping of stories based in Tulsa, where I live so...Here is the plot I figured I'd share. Our main character is a woman assassin (fancy that from me) that is a cross between the crazy Cat and the back water Angelle. Her name is Demond. (Yes, I see the irony) Anyway, she is hired by this nerd who wants her to kill his boss for reasons he gives her like drugs and all that. Well, the spin is when the deed is done, the only reason why he wanted him dead was because the man stole his stuffed bunny. So, here is Demond, big bad assassin and she has just killed a man for nothing more than a stuffed rabbit, which the nerd claims was a gift from his mom. Fearing that her rep will be ruined, Demond drops him, and then walks away carrying the rabbit. After all, it gets lonely one the road. It all takes place in Tulsa. What do you think?!
Thursday, 18 December 2008 13:12:36
[b]SPOILER ALERT![/b] So there is it. [i]Prospero’s Legacy[/i]. I can’t believe I’ve finished it! Coming in at forty chapters, and over 124,000 words, it is by far the longest story I’ve ever written. In fact, two and a half times as long. I first had the basic idea two years ago, a simple plot revolving around children being taken from an Alliance facility and used by an Independent faction. It was going to be set on a moon called Prospero, tying up (I thought) quite nicely with Miranda, and River was going to be kidnapped and forced to lead them. That story got recycled into something else (not particularly recognisable), but I liked the idea of someone having been developed by the Alliance getting kidnapped. I wrote a single sheet, which I actually incorporated into the end of [i]Hope[/i], way back in July 2007, about Mara Tam in a chair, being watched by two scientists as she had nightmares. I used the name Mara because I’d already had Simon use that as an alias, several months earlier. See, it all ties together … Anyway, it grew. Evolved. I’d drop breadcrumbs, mention the New Browncoats, have Simon’s old mentor Andrew Brooks poisoned by an unnamed source, then becoming more specific, with talk of RePax (including the reappearance of our old friend Niska in [i]Eden[/i]), Anti-Pax, and … so on. All the while I was thinking about the final outline of the major arc I was working towards, and getting more and more scared! I began to wonder if I could ever do it justice, and realised I had thrown so many breadcrumbs it was almost an entire bakery. Something had to be done. I sat down, drew a web, and tried to draw all the different elements I’d already hinted at into a coherent story. I decided I had to have a sort of prequel, because apart from having Mal being semi-naked and tortured, I also needed to have someone give him some information, and decided that should be Niska. I always envisaged that evil old man coming back from being a Reaver, and wanted it to be part of the over-arching plot. And Mal had to be able to finally deal with Niska once and for all. So [i]Volcano’s Edge [/i]was born. And Dillon, Breed and Alex decided to make an entrance, which meant they also wanted to be in at the denouement, so now I had other characters to write for … Terror is not too strong a word for how I felt as I started to write snippets while writing other stories too. That’s how I tend to write – if I envisage a scene from maybe five chapters ahead, I put it down. It might change over time, might be dumped entirely, but then at least I only have to write the connecting bits. Oddly enough, the scene at the end of part thirty-nine, where Mal and Zoe look out over Serenity Valley from the ridge where they had held out at the end of the war, was written virtually first. The climax to the story was always going to take place on Hera – it was just the getting there that changed. I have to admit, though, having Regan and Gabriel involved was almost an afterthought. I had always felt that they were blinkered, but not complicit in River’s Academy experience, and wanted to give them a chance to make things right. Perhaps it was a cliché to have Gabriel die in saving Simon, and originally I wrote it that they never got to say goodbye (as Joss did with Wash), but I changed my mind. What’s wrong with a good old cliché once in a while? Chiang Goff, Emil Quintana, Vic Ramsey … they all were necessary characters to pull the story forward. But you have no idea how much I agonised over whether to have it be Mal on board Columbine when she was boarded by the Alliance, or Dillon, whether Bennett should just be an Independent sympathiser or have him – as I did in the end – be an old friend. Well, almost. I used that to tie up with Freya’s past. You might have guessed that I like doing that – using little hints to refer back to previous stories. I see my Maya tales as one continuous arc, and try to keep the timeline and histories accurate within it. Sometimes I have to reread my tales myself, jus
Thursday, 18 December 2008 19:05:01
Some of you know that ManWithPez has been working on earning his degree. As we come to the end of the year, I'd like to tell you how great he has done since going back to school last Spring Term. Where did he stand? He was a few credits short of an Associates and a lot short of a Bachelors. Where is he now? He finished his Associate degree. He has NINE, that's right, NINE hours left to complete his Bachelors Degree in Applied Science with a Minor in History. He will have done it all in a little over a year. He worked hard. He found out Military can take CLEP and DANTES tests for free so he used it to his advantage. He took every test that he could apply to his degree. He then proceeded to pass all of them. We're talking Civil War tests, Vietnam War tests, Ethics and Anthropology tests. It was amazing. He even rocked his classes. He earned only one B...every other class was an A. I was impressed. This is a man who hasn't been to school in 10 years. While Math had a bit of a learning curve, he still did it. He never gave up. Three cheers to ManWithPez! Soon you'll be holding a Diploma. Up next: Masters Degree in Library Science.