1,667 Words

Tags

Dayna Kingsley, Galactic Federation, Instability, NaNoWriMo

And so it starts. The prologue has begun. On the second interstellar voyage of the first manned interplanetary vessel, its destination system proves to be already occupied by another, much larger ship. They confirm their location, the presence of the seven known planets, begin imaging them all — then notice a subtle pinging like a soft radar pulse. Somewhere only a few light-seconds away, a stranger watches, and as they locate that stranger, it waits, until they pulse a similar signal back to it and it matches theirs.

The careful dance of understanding is begun…

Five months later, back in Sol System, Dayna Kingsley’s holiday is drawing to a close, and she waits to board her shuttle to the Moon, where the Solar Police have their headquarters, to receive her next assignment…

Building Worlds

Tags

Books, Galactic Federation, NaNoWriMo, Sci-Fi, Thoughts, Writing process

I don’t think my writing process has really changed all that much, but the longer I keep doing this, the more of what was once subconscious becomes accessible to my conscious mind. The old “I have a feeling this is going somewhere” or “This isn’t going to work out” feelings about things I was writing — which were usually pretty accurate; it’s not that I was any more wrong than usual — have become steadily more nuanced until I’ve started to be able to unpack them into why.

Take Dayna, for example. She’s now rapidly pulling ahead in the NaNo stakes, because realising that I needed to do First Contact, well, first spurred me on to finally think about and start to untangle all the various aspects of the First Contact story, and that, like designing the blueprints for a building, is letting me see at least some of what this construction could look like — and what it could look like is good.

[[Spoilers, spoilers.]]

The Wrong Story

Tags

Books, Galactic Federation, Sci-Fi, Writing process

I was debating making alterations to Dayna’s story, or at least to which part of it I used as a NaNo candidate, and I decided to talk some of it over with a friend. Talking (or typing, since it was an online conversation) forces me to put my thoughts and feelings into words, which helps me define what I’m really thinking. In this case it crystallised the whole general sense I had that something just wasn’t complete, didn’t go deep enough: that I was thinking of telling the wrong story.

The tale I was planning to tell is complete enough in and of itself, but it starts in the wrong place and is either irrelevant or repetitive in relation to the grand arc of the Federation’s overall plot. It’s a story best told later, as a tie-in that explores some previously offscreen events in greater depth. Writing the first Federation stories to be released to the world means I need to be writing on the Grand Arc.

[[Spoilers Ahoy!]]

Let’s Talk About… Siris!

Tags

Books, Characters, Galactic Federation, Sci-Fi, Siris

Have we talked about Siris before? I can’t remember.

Siris is one of my main Galactic Federation characters. You may have met him in the first chapter of Tsien’s story, if you’ve been reading around the site. By that point, though, he’s over 300 years old chronologically, and I’ve actually no idea how old he is in terms of years experienced, since various versions of him have been recorded, stored, brought back, blown up, and so on.

His life is, needless to say, more than a little complicated.

But it’s been complicated almost from the start. Siris was born on a remote colony world, on the “fringes” of Federation space. I say “fringes” because that’s never, strictly speaking, accurate in space terms. For illustration, here’s a picture that never ceases to amaze me:

AIN Awakened

Tags

AIN, Books, Dayna Kingsley, Galactic Federation, NaNoWriMo, Sci-Fi

It seems it’s been so long since I had the focus to spare to write here that I actually failed to update all NaNo! You guys know what this means, right? It means I get to talk about something new!

I had a plan for November, I really, really did. I was going to write about Dayna Kingsley of the Solar Police, and how she ends up in the future, and what happened to the crew of the derelict spaceship (spoiler: they were not eaten by aliens), and who that weird species with guns are and what they want, and why she seemed to be cured but is getting sicker by the day, and how she’s going to get a misfit bunch of survivors like herself to safety before they all quite possibly die. It was good, it made sense, it had its own little spot in my 4,000-year Federation timeline…

And then I had this dream.

You may have gathered, if you’re one of the poor souls who’ve followed this on-again-off-again blog for some time, that that happens a lot. (And also that I have really coherent, film-like dreams that I always thought were normal but which most of my friends assure me are anything but.) It was involved, and vivid, and impressive, and really emotionally charged in places, and I debated with myself for a bit and lost. So I ended up writing that for NaNo instead. In following entries (ones that aren’t about Lindsi), I’ll explain some more…

Tsien now up!

Tags

Books, Chapters, Galactic Federation, Sci-Fi

All right, that’s one more story started on its way in the world — this is just one chapter of a longer story, this time, and while I wrote it a few years back, should be in decent nick. It’s a story towards the ‘end’ (of the part I’ve looked at) of the Galactic Federation timeline, following a young soldier named Tsien in a galactic war. To avoid annihilation, the Federation have been forced to go to greater lengths than anyone ever desired…

And no, it doesn’t have a title. I’m pretty bad at titles. So for now, it’s just called “Tsien“. If anyone thinks of anything better at any point, shout it out! Like everything else, this first chapter is up here under CC-BY-SA, so please, share it around!

Meet the Characters: Dayna Kingsley

Tags

Ask away!, Characters, Dayna Kingsley, Galactic Federation, Sci-Fi

It’s about time we had a “Meet the Characters” post! I have a lot of characters, and I think it’ll be fun to introduce them all properly, particularly the side ones who you may not otherwise get much chance to see (though this particular example is very much a main character). That’s right, by my own loose terminology we’re talking some serious semi-canon here! Some terminology, dates, etc. may be subject to change, but the overall concept isn’t. Why did I pick this particular lady to go first? Well, I already have two fantasy or similar stories up… it seemed like time for a bit of sci-fi, considering that I actually write both in nearly equal proportion! And she’s an old one, so she’s reasonably settled, for the most part.

Dayna Kingsley is an officer of the Solar Police in the relatively near future. The Solar Police is a unified force formed to catch and deal with criminals in interplanetary space since space travel within the solar system became commonplace, following the invention of the space-warping “jump drive”, which permits Solar System distances to be traversed in a matter of days or weeks. She was born on Mars, in the first of the truly Martian colonies, and joined the Solar Police’s  direct recruitment program on leaving education.