Interview with a Character: Kaga Cheng

Rita:  Hello, Rita Trevalyan here with another character interview from my forthcoming book Takuhi’s Dream.  Will you tell us your name please, sir?

Kaga:  Kaga Cheng.

Rita:  Home world?

Kaga:  You mean the world I was decanted on?

Rita:  Yes, and spent your childhood on.

Kaga:  Gessename V, but I started at the Feldmar Institute when I was very young.

Rita: How old?

Kaga:  Don’t recall exactly, think I was 3 or 4.  I was an orphan, my parents were killed by bug invaders, and I was sent to the Institute where I lived and studied until I was 17.  Then I started going out on missions as a FirstInScout.

Rita:  What does a FirstInScout  do, exactly?

Kaga:  Makes first contact.  He (usually we’re males, just as kulturologists are females) encounters the planet, and reports on the physical part of the planet, planetologist, meteorologis, biologis and other fields all rolled into one.  The Kulturologist concentrates on the intelligent life forms of the planet. 

Rita:  Yes, we interviewed one of those last week.So the training for this career is somewhat involved, sounds difficult and dangerous.

Kaga:  We have to be tested extensively for our suitability for the work.  But in my case, it was, how you say, duck soup. It’s as though I were bred for this.  We may lose a few along the way, from attacks from wild creatures on the planet, but we’re taught self-defense techniques and how to deal with most species, even ones we haven’t encountered before.  

Rita:  So you’re taught mind control techniques?

Kaga:  Yes, but only with creatures which are non-sentient.  The sentients are within the Kulturologist’s bailiwick, and so we leave it to her.  

Rita:So you have some psi, some psychic powers.

Kaga:Yes.  We all do, it’s imprinted on the DNA of every member of the Human sector of the Galaxy, but the Koinonians try to suppress it among their people.  Anyway, we’re tested for our amount of it, and if we have enough, we continue with our FirstInScout training. I don’t know what happens to the kids who fail. We never talk about them.  

Rita:  Ah. Very interesting.  Are you usually the leader of the team?

Kaga:  Usually.  There are several departments under me, zoology, botany, geology, and so on, then there is the Kulturologist.  Together, she and I lead the team. There are up to twenty five on a large team.  

Rita:  Do any missions stick out in your mind?

KagaL  Yes, there was the Mission to Sogdien III.  Beautiful planet. We were just packing up when--No let your readers find out when they read Takuhi’s Dream.

Rita:  Yes. Watch for it when it comes out from Crimson Frost Books.  Thank you, Mr. Cheng.

Kaga: Any time for you, Rita.

Interview with a Character: Takuhi Maimun

This is an interview with a major character from my upcoming books, Takuhi’s Dream, Takuhi’s Nightmare, and later, Takuhi’s Daydream, Takuhi Maimun.

Rita:  Good morning.  What is your full name  and occupation?

Takuhi:  Takuhi Maimun, kulturolgist, Sister of the Order of Kenderited.

Rita: Sounds fascinating.  What does a kulturologist do?

Takuhi:  We analyze cultures and determine what, if any, contact they may have with the rest of the Galaxy.  

Rita:  Do you ever run into trouble from certain sectors of the Compire,who disapprove of the classification we might give a given society/culture?

Takuhi:  Not all that often.  But when we do, it’s because the industrial sector wanted to exploit some natural resources, and one of my Sisters had placed the culture under protection by the ExTee Council.  The Council generally rubber stamps the protection seal and the classification. They are pretty incorruptible. The industrial sector can get pretty vociferous when the Sister has made such a classification, and the Council has ruled against them.  The industrialist sector only cares about the bottom line, and isn’t all that enlightened.

Rita:  Just like in my time.  We certainly could use a few of you in my time on this planet.  I see by the document you handed me that there are basically 4 classifications.  I is open for colonization/trade with the rest of the Galaxy. How often do you run into one of these?  

Takuhi:  More often than you might think.  Most stars have exoplanets, and many are capable of advanced life.  Many of these had been already included by the Compire by the time you Erthlings had entered the scene, but there are many more still to be discovered, which is the job of the FirstInScout.

Rita:  What does a FirstInScout do?

Takuhi:  He makes first contact with the planet.  If there is intelligent life, I or one of my Sisters is sent in.  He can request a specific Sister if he’s worked with her successfully before.

Rita:  What are the other classes?

Takuhi:  II Society may mingle with rest of galaxy but colonization is not encouraged. III A  No contact with this culture. It is under protection as a fragile culture. B. No contact with this culture for the good of the Compire.  The denizens of this culture are dangerous. IV. Under quarantine. This culture is so inimical that any contact is prohibited. Quarantine while Sisterhood, FirstInScout Council and ExTee Council decide whether to sterilize the planet.  That has only happened once, to Koinonia, even so, some managed to leave the planet, survive, and breed.

Rita:  Hasn’t there been an advancement in technology so that sacrificing all the life on a planet is not necessary?

Takuhi:  Yes, in the past 100 Galactic Standard Years the Il’a’nai capsule was developed.  It terraforms a planet in just a few Galactic Standard Minutes. We used it on the planet formerly known as Koinonia, and opened it for colonization.  

Rita: Not to get into anything negative but you’ve mentioned the Koinonians who got away, escaped their fate, so to speak.  How are they so dangerous?

Takuhi:  They oppose all the positive and enlightened values of the Compire, as you would put it, “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”  You see, although we are a monarchy, we have a great many rights you Americans do not possess. One is freedom FROM religion. A religion or ideology may not proselytize.  You may inform about your chosen faith, but not exhort. The problem with the Koinonians is that they feel they must exhort, and their women are good for just one thing, they feel, to carry around their babies until they are born.   Can you imagine? Carrying around a fetus until it exits your body? [shivers] Obscene.

Rita:  I look forward to our developing the artiwomb technology.  I will be writing the 3rd book in this accidental trilogy starting in 9 days.  You can find Takuhi’s Dream at Crimson Frost Books or on Amazon very soon. 

The Creation of Myrrddin Rising

Yesterday morning I finished the first draft of a writing project I had been working on for some years. The reason it took so long was that I lost the WIP a number of times, due to the flash drive it was on being corrupted and having to be reformatted, which of course erases everything on it.  But this time I was determined to finish it. It would also serve as my training table for NaNoWriMo, which starts 2 weeks from tomorrow. (See last week’s blog, “NaNoWriMo and Me”) I recorded the number of words I wrote on my calendar each day. One day I even managed to write an entire chapter, over 2400 words’ worth in one session.  It was the trial of a kidnapper near the end of the book.  

The story starts in Tintagel Cave, where Myrrddin, pronounced Meer-th(voiced th as in the)in (I used the Cymric version of his title), awakens after a sleep of over 16 centuries and moves to the Berkeley hills in California, where Emrys, his actual name, discovers how to become an American.  I used two sources. One was the movie The Strange Case of Benjamin Button, and E.B.White’s materials about Merlin the Magician, in which he says that Merlin lived backwards and “remembered the future.”  E.B. White may be better remembered as the source for the Disney movie The Sword in the Stone.  I didn’t go into the more scholarly wranglings of the Merlin story because I wanted my story to be pure entertainment, not a scholarly treatise.  

The young woman who awakens him goes through various adventures with him, including a trip back in time to the priestess sanctuary where she and the priestesses are chased by Saxons intent on rapine and destruction.  At one point, they even encounter aliens who invite Earth to join the Galactic Federation, and take a honeymoon junket out among the stars. The household Talese lives in is a cooperative household in a made-over former fraternity house in the Berkeley hills off the UC Berkeley campus.  Emrys helps them overcome their constant enemies, or should I call them the the household’s nemesis? The jesoids who seek to overcome them at every turn because they cannot tolerate a group which ascribes to either their side, or that of the jesoids’ supposed enemies, who are in reality their secret allies.  Emrys destroys a group of 20 of them, who has been hacking Gryphon House’s computer LAN and server farm.  

Because of the church’s constant harassment of them, a judgment is placed upon them, and the church loses not only cash money, but also their televangelism TV network, which is ceded onto Gryphon House.  This is the fulfillment of a long held dream for several of the residents, and they work at the studio, producing content for the network and invite other Pagan and Wiccan groups in the Bay Area to produce programs for the network.  A ward spell Emrys creates produces for the house and grounds of Gryphon House in the shape of turning all would be intruders into gold creates another revenue stream for Gryphon House. The amount of money this generates is so great that The residents cannot spend all of it themselves, and vote to create a Pagan dining hall and community center to help the homeless and other low income and disadvantaged people, of any faith in the Berkeley-Oakland area.  

This center is a huge success and provides a model for other Pagan groups who, after judgments that accrue to them large amounts of cash, are motivated to create dining halls/community centers in their own cities.    I admit fully that this story is a wish fulfillment fantasy. May it come true, with or without the presence of Myrrddin in our century. 

NaNoWriMo & Me

I’ve participated in NaNoWriMo since 2006, when my fellow writer and adopted niece Kira Cattan first told me about it.  NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month, but the “National” part is a misnomer because it has spread all over the globe.  In it, you write a 50,000 word novel in a 30 day month. It used to be that if you didn’t have a plot, no problem, just writing, maybe one word 50K times, and you had it.  But these days, they’ve turned professional, and are asking us to prepare for the big event. I have had several of my NaNo novels published, once they were polished and edited.  Or was it Kira? It strikes me that it was actually my fellow Druid Michael Sharding who informed me about NaNoWriMo, and the rest is history. I got involved in it. My dearly departed the late Richard L. Fulton II called it “the Olympics for writers.”

Like many other writers, I battle writer’s block every day, so I got a book by Jenna Glazter titled Outwitting Writer’s Block  from Writer’s Digest Books.  I employed several tricks from the book, but my favorite has to be “the ugly notebook.”  From a salvage operation I participated in during a muggle gig, I acquired a 3-ringed looseleaf binder that had started its existence as an Office Services manual. I disposed of the contents, and put a package of college ruled notebook filler paper in it.  In this “ugly notebook, I warmed up and limbered my brain to do my writing. I started with the verbal form of scat singing. Scat singing is an art form started when blacks were slaves, and not allowed to own or play any musical instruments. For one thing, it’s rather difficult to play the banjo when your hands were required for picking cotton.  After they were freed, Such artists as Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong, and in our own era, Bobby McFerrin were known for their scat singing skills. I did it to warm up my brain. After all, dancers warm up their muscles, as do athletes. Shouldn’t we, as athletes of words warm up our writing muscles?Later, I took to asking questions pertaining to my stories.  

I have what’s known as dyscalculia, or math anxiety, so it was easier for me to write 2000 words per day for 25 days than 1667 for 30.  I took 5 days off for the Veterans’ Day parade, Thanksgiving, the Scottish Ritethe Liberty Lodge Thanksgiving dinner, and spending the day with my daughter.  After Doc died, and I moved to Sacramento, my housemate Stephen couldn’t understand why I would engage in something that didn’t have an immediate monetary payoff, and would try to sabotage me in all kinds of ways, mostly by trying to distract me by his incessant chattering like a monkey.  To persuade him of my seriousness, I wrote every day, resulting in 60,000 words or more.  Once I’d polished my manuscript, I submitted it to my new publisher, and after some edits, the book would come out, in ebook format.  After I got my Dragon, It was that much easier to produce my 2000 words, since I would dictate them, and the Dragon would type them on the screen.  I wrote in the morning because the chances were greater that I would be left alone, and I would have the rest of the day to do whatever I needed to do.  

I was, by now, participating 3 times a year, because they added Camp NaNoWriMo in April and  July. At first the April Camp Nano was “Script Frenzy”, and I wrote a screenplay, and a stage play.  Then I turned back to writing novels. Lately, so that I don’t have to wake up to a blank screen with an equally blank mind, I scribble out on paper on my clipboard “(I have 10), at least a portion on my writing for the morrow.  I take that clipboard with me to the bank, the store, the bus stop, and Kaiser, so that I’m always creating, even when not at my computer.  

A warning:when you go to www.nanowrimo.org to commit to your novel and sign up, they will strongly encourage you to donate.  With the exception of one November Nano, and two camps when I either couldn’t participate at all, or had to drop out for health reasons, I participated for 13 years without donating, so you don’t need to, if you’re low fixed income like me.  But if I ever strike it big, I intend to. So get an idea, go to www.nanowrimo.org and register your novel idea. Plan and prep.  Then, starting November 1st,at 12:01 am if you’re really eager and a night owl, write your 1667 words or however many words you write, and on every day, through November 30th, then validate your novel,and join me in in the winner’s circle.