Drabble #2: My Little Time Traveller

Last weekend, my daughter was watching Phineas and Ferb yesterday (thank you Netflix!) and after an episode involving time travel, she said those exact words from the first line of the scene below.  Later, my wife and I watched the latest Doctor Who and I couldn't get her little voice out of my head. This drabble was born. Enjoy!

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“I wish I had a time travel device to go meet my ancestors!” The young girl’s voice cut through the stillness of the lazy Sunday morning.

The girl’s father sat behind his desk, sipping his coffee and watching over her while cartoons played in the background. A small smile slid over his lips as he muttered softly to himself, “that’s my girl.”

“I know daddy, I have to be careful though. If I change anything, it could cause a pair of ducks. I don’t know why that’s bad, but the Doctor guy with the blue box - he said it could really mess everything up.”

“I think you mean ‘paradox’, honey.” he said, the grin becoming wider. ”And yeah, those are very bad. Has mommy been letting you watch our shows again?”

She played with her dolls, not answering for a little while. Distractedly, she responded “No, I just had a long talk with the man. He was really funny. He asked if we had any fish fingers, but I laughed at him and said that fish don’t have fingers. I hope he comes back again some day.”

Goosebumps appeared on his arms as a cold shiver ran up his back. ”What man are you talking about? Who was it?”

She turned an angelic smile up at him and said matter-of-factly, “Yep! That’s him!”

Tumblr Time!

Hey All!

I haven'e been active on here lately, and for that, I do apologize.  Between here, Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr, I'm finding it hard to keep up.  I really need to start linking these places together.  One thing I have started doing that's been fun is writing a Drabble-A-Day on my Tumblr site.  (For those of you who don't spend time around Fan Fiction sites, a "drabble" is a short scene which is not attached to a larger story.)  Rather than send you over there, however, I'll be posting the drabbles here as well.

The first one I did was a scene involving my main character in Star Wars: the Old Republic.  He was a Sith warrior who married a cute little Twi'lek smuggler named Vette.  I always thought their relationship was incredibly cute and thinking about their relationship, this scene was born:

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“Vette, have you seen my spare saber hilt?” I had to shout to be heard over the low hum of the engines. The Emperor’s Wrath, indeed. Crawling on the floor of the engine room and squeezing into spaces way too small for someone of my …stature.

“And why would you think I’d have it, oh great and powerful sith lord?” My wife’s voice had a sharp edge to it that I’d come to recognize and dread; the tone that usually preceded a round of scathing remarks. It amazed me that so much passion and fire could be contained in a creature so small and beautiful, but then, that was one of the reasons I married her.

With a hand on her hip, she continued scathingly. ”You think I stole it or something? Maybe I pawned it on our last trip to Nar Shadda. Is that what you think? Maybe your ‘apprentice’ borrowed it or that walking fleabag! Why would I take your stupid saber thingy?”“

I turned to look at her. Even sitting on the floor, I barely had to tilt my head to look into her glittering eyes. ”Actually, my love. I was asking you because the last time I had the ‘saber thingy’, it was attached to my belt. The one that you pulled off of me and threw across the room during our last stop in port; when everyone else had shore leave…”

Her eyes became wide and a dark flush spread across her aqua-colored skin. An almost shy smile slid over her lips and she slid down onto the floor next to me, her lithe form pressing against mine as she wriggled under the metal pipes. Now her voice was soft, playful, and just a bit breathless.

“I’ll help you look.”

Why Psych?

I keep coming back to writing fan fiction for the TV show Psych...  Why?  Good question!   Basically, it comes down to what is familiar and enjoyable.   Like a favorite book or comfort food, Psych makes me feel good.  I settle into the characters and the story and it just flows.  I don't think of it as work because the characters just speak to me.  Not literally, of course.   That would be crazy...  (Shut up Shawn, I am not!)

So yeah - I love the show, but there are a lot of shows that I love: Farscape, Firefly, Fringe, Doctor Who...   Why am I not writing fan fiction for those?  Again, good question!  Maybe I will someday, but as much as I love these other shows, they don't get into my head the same way that Shawn and Gus and Juliet and the rest do.  Something about those characters resonates with me on a level that makes me want to write stories about them.

And then there's psychfic.com.  The site makes it so easy to put my stories out there for a very appreciative audience.  I get a count of how many people have read my story as I post each chapter.  I get reviews that are very encouraging and positive.  (Not as many as I would like, but I do get them.)  Basically, it lets me get my writing out there to a specific audience who seem to really like what I do.

Psych has really helped me grow as a writer, letting me focus on the craft of writing good, fun dialogue.  I can focus on plot and character interactions with people that are already well-established.  It's helped me in my own writing to make characters that are believable and enjoyable to read.  I look back at my first novel and I realize that I could have done SO much better, but I've found that is true of all authors.  You never stop learning and growing in this profession (or in my case, hobby).  When I retire from my "real" job, I know that I will be spending a lot of time writing and I can look back on my body of work and learn from what I'm doing now.

So what's next?  Well, I'm about halfway through my latest Psych episode, On the Turning Away.  After that, I'll be gearing up for NaNoWriMo and my goal is to get a huge jump on my newest novel, Dream Flyer.  I've made decent progress so far, but I really want to focus on the story and get it done!  I'm planning to send it out to publishers and seeing what happens.  After that, I'm planning to get the last book in the Undead War trilogy completed - Khol's story needs an ending!   So, big things planned, but I am excited.

I'll keep you posted!

Writing has been tough lately.  It's something I love to do but there are so many distractions and responsibilities that it is really hard to make myself sit down and commit to the process.  With that in mind, I'm going to take the advice of the late Ray Bradbury: write every day.

Now I know there's a lot more good advice floating around out there but that's just another distraction for me.  Every minute I spend reading or listening to advice from others about how to write is a minute I could actually be writing.  At the moment, I've got two novels in progress and another "episode" in my fan-fiction series for the TV show Psych.

I can't complain: I've got two completed novels and a novel's worth of fan fiction.  I've also got two "screenplays" that I wrote for work: a pair of fun training videos - one done as The Twilight Zone and one as Mission: Impossible.  I've been asked to do a third one and the concept I keep coming back to is the Wizard of Oz.  So yeah...  Another project to work on!

So I am going to make it my goal to actually do what Bradbury suggests.  Writing SOMETHING every day: a blog post, a new chapter in one of my novels or fan fiction, or maybe even something for an entirely new or different project.  I know that if I ever want to make this more than just a hobby, I have to do it.  Hmmm...  November is coming up.  Maybe it's time to do National Novel Writing Month.

http://www.nanowrimo.org/

Take the month of November and really go crazy on writing?  We will see.

Chapter 2 of Dream Flyer

Trying to get myself back in gear for writing and I figured I'd post this for anyone to look over for more feedback.  The chapter is titled "First Encounters".

Dina had no idea how long she floated through the clouds. Time was impossible to tell. There was no day or night, only a softly-lit swirl of mist. She couldn’t see the sun or stars. She never ate or slept, but she never felt tired or hungry, though she knew what those concepts meant.

To break the monotony, she began to play and experiment with her ability to fly. With only a thought, she dove downward through the sea of white, feeling the rush of wind through her hair. Turning upward, she went into a loop while twisting in circles. She imagined she was a bird, spreading her wings and banking left and right. There were no landmarks for her to gauge how fast she was going, but the wind whipped through her hair and made the hem of her dress snap like a flag on a windy day.

­This was freedom!

Up and down were difficult to determine but she discovered that when she stopped focusing on staying aloft, she began to fall. She let gravity fully take hold and found herself caught in the weightlessness of free-fall. She tumbled and spun through the air until she tucked her arms in at her sides and plunged downward even faster. A cry of excitement flew from her lips as she reveled in the sensation until, suddenly, she felt something shift.

Slowing her descent, she scanned the area around her. She couldn’t tell what caused the change. The lighting had dimmed slightly and the air felt cooler. She was still surrounded by clouds, but something felt… different. A faint sound crept around the edges of the silence, a high-pitched whine and a rush of air. The noise got louder and louder until Dina thought it was going to tear her apart. She felt like she should recognize the sound and though it was familiar, she couldn’t remember.

Suddenly a huge metal blade sliced through the clouds only a dozen yards away from her, causing her to scream with fear and surprise. Her scream was was instantly drowned out as the noise became a deafening shriek that made Dina clamp her hands over her ears. The blade rushed downward at a frightening speed but she was also able to make out a larger shape through the clouds. It was long and narrow and she saw the glow of white-blue flames and blinking red lights. Whatever it was, it seemed to take no notice of her.

Panting and shivering in the clouds, the sound slowly faded. She hugged her arms around chest and tried to slow her breathing. Was it a sword, swung through the air by some flying monster? It didn’t look sharp enough to cut anything, but the size was incredible. The blade was at least ten feet across and she had no idea how long it was. The shadowy shape she saw deeper in the clouds had to be hundreds of feet in length.

While she was trying to make sense of the encounter, the clouds below her suddenly erupted with light and an explosion ripped through the chilly air. After blinking in shock for a few seconds, Dina launched herself toward the flickering flames below. The air rushed over her and as she got closer, a dark twisted shape suddenly flew by her. She only got a brief glance but it looked like a piece of metal, larger than her and scorched by fire. She could smell smoke in the air while she whirled around the area. More burning, mangled pieces of metal hurtled through the air and began to fall away from her. On one piece she saw some letters and numbers and on another she could make out the word “Delta”.

Then she heard a scream. The feeling of complete terror that accompanied the sound sent chills up her spine. It was fading quickly so without another thought, she flew in that direction. The unending shriek got louder and louder until she could make out a shadow of a person falling through the clouds.

Without warning, the sky cleared and she could see a sea of twinkling lights in the darkness below her. The lights formed crisscross patterns on the ground and when she looked back over her shoulder, she saw a clear night sky filled with twinkling stars. The clouds had vanished, but she could still see the burning debris plummeting around her.

Shaking away her confusion, she focused again on the falling person. “No! No! Please, God No!” a female voice cried out between terrified screams. Dina got closer and made out a few details, long black hair streaming away from a woman with pale skin. Her eyes were huge and filled with panic. The woman blinked in confusion as she spotted Dina zipping toward her.

The woman let out another shriek of terror as she turned to look toward the ground. Dina screamed too when she saw how close it was. Dark earth filled her view but she ignored it and reached out again for the woman. Dina’s fingers brushed her arm but the woman became hazy and indistinct. Her screams faded abruptly and the world around dissolved into cold white mist once more. The ground, the lights, the woman, even the twisted fiery wreck were all gone.

Dina was alone again.

Learning to Fly

This is the latest version of the first chapter of my latest book, Dream Flyer.  It will undoubtedly be edited and changed as I get further into writing and after my editor and proof-readers have their input.  I will be posting more later.   I hope you enjoy.

Her first memory was of floating in a sea of white.  When she awoke, she blinked groggily before looking around at an impenetrable mass of swirling mist.   The air chilled her skin but the cold didn’t seem to bother her, even though she wore only a thin cotton dress, pink with white flowers around the knee-length hem.   She was a young woman, her figure slim but showing the curves she would grow into.   Her hair, a soft brown color tumbled over her shoulders in wavy curls exaggerated by the moisture in the air.  She blinked slowly and looked around, her gray-blue eyes wide with fear.

As she bobbed slowly in the still air, she tried to remember how she got here, but there was nothing.   She didn’t know her name.  She had no recollection of her parents or if she had any siblings.  She couldn’t picture a house or any other place she might have lived.   She didn’t remember having any hobbies or friends.   She knew that a home and a family existed, but there was only empty space filling the place where those memories should be, just like the mists surrounding her.

Letting out a startled cry, she suddenly realized that she was hovering in mid-air.  There was nothing solid beneath her and when she looked down, she felt sudden lurching sensation and began to fall.  A frightened scream burst from her chest as she flailed her arms uselessly while plummeting through the clouds.  “NO!” she shouted, her voice cracking with fear.

Almost as quickly as it began, her fall stopped and she began to hover again.  Chest heaving, she looked around and trailed her long, thin fingers through the mist.  She tilted her head to look upward and thought to herself, “up”.  Immediately, she floated upwards.  With another thought, she banked left and right, weaving through the air as gracefully as a bird.  She rolled onto her back and stretched her arms over her head as she floated through the air.  It felt like swimming but without any sensation of pressure or weight. 

The feeling of flying made her stomach flutter with excitement but she couldn’t fight the dread that sat in her chest like a lead weight.  M The world around her was silent and formless.  She was alone and lost in her troubled thoughts: 

Who am I? 

What is this place? 

What happened to me? 

Where is everyone else? 

The questions kept forming in her mind but there were no answers until one word flowed through her min, a name.   With a quiet sigh, she said softly, “Dina.  My name is Dina.”   She looked down at the cotton dress she wore and she came to another realization.  “I like flowers and the color pink.”  Looking around again at the swirling mists surrounding her, she added, “And I can fly.”

For now, that was enough.

Starting a New Book is Hard!

So as I said before, I've begun writing a new book and I can honestly say, getting this just right is really difficult.  I want to convey what the story is about without giving too much away too soon.  I've already rewritten the prologue and first chapter five times - usually after getting feedback from friends, but also because I'm trying to get it right.  There's been a lot of progress this week.  Characters are developing and events are occurring!  Introducing new characters and settings.  Quickly closing in on the 10K word mark.

As soon as I get final updated draft that I'm happy with, I'll post a preview here.  Take care all!!