Deltan Skies Revealed

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May 2nd, 2013

People may have noticed an extreme lack of content on this blog for the last several months. If Ethereal Girls taught me anything, it is blog posts do not sell books and all the marketing in the world will not help if people do not like what you’re selling(unless they troll you). However,  I have been working on a new book all this time:

v1b_EBOOK

A young elven mage named Quintanelle Fillion flees from her totalitarian homeland to New Delta, a dense metropolis made up of hundreds of mile-high towers. She finds employment working for New Delta’s top private detective, a human named Alfonso Deegan, and his red dragon associate Mordridakon. Quintanelle’s first case thrusts her in the middle of New Delta’s own problems.

After millennia of oppression, members of the disenfranchised avian race have taken complete control of the criminal underworld, but what they want is the one thing can’t steal. To achieve their goals, the avian’s charismatic leader enlists the help of a goblin shaman cast out from her own suffering people. Together they create a risky and daring plan that involves everyone from the city’s inept mayor and a corrupt city senator, to Quintanelle’s new boss and even her own family.

As their plan unfolds, a dark reality emerges. New Delta stands on the brink of total annihilation, and Quintanelle may be the only one who can stop it. 

Some people might find this book very similar to my very first release in June 2011, A Clear and Feathered Danger, which featured a similar book blurb and cover. It ultimately sold more than a hundred copies.  Unfortunately, it was not the book it should have been and neither were its sequels. As a result, the sequels bombed. So, I decided to go back and revise it. What started out as a simple revision and slight expansion snowballed. Soon a 33k fantasy thriller turned into an 87k science-fantasy novel.

There are new friends:

“Alfonso mentioned you help out,” Quintanelle said.

“Yes, I provide assistance on cases and back-end office work for him,” Corazon replied. “What it really means,” Alfonso said, “is it takes over cases and accesses my finances without asking.”

“That is not an accurate assessment of my work.”

“Yes it is,” Mordridakon growled.

There are new enemies:

“What did you think I’d do with a base full of military aircraft and a nuclear bomb,” Platon said, ” force the city to hold hands and sing songs?”

There is more action:

Borga dropped to her knees, but Metara grabbed the turnbuckle and pushed herself up. Borga’s eyes went wide as she realized the consequences.

“Time to tap, bitch!” Metara twisted, forcing Borga over onto her back, with Metara’s quads still firmly in place. Borga had no choice but to submit.

Metara leaped onto the turnbuckle, raising her fists in victory, enjoying the adoration of a nonexistent crowd.

There is more humor:

Every solider on the deck pointed their gun at him. “You’re trespassing in a restricted area!” one shouted. “Leave now or we’ll be forced to open fire!”

Abernathy glared at the soldiers. “If you don’t lower your weapons, every single one of you will be looking for a job because I’m the damn mayor! You work for me!”

The soldiers did not flinch.

“Was there an election we didn’t hear about? The mayor we know is an impotent troll!” A soldier shouted.

There is more drama:

Sisqub extended his wings and raised his beak. “Imagine countless avians huddled together in the dark, most having never done anything but exist, massacred because their only crime was wanting to live above the hominids on tower-tops, closer to the wide open Deltan skies.”

“Ye ashamed of the hate put in ye head by ye people,” Eluna said, “but ye have no idea what true hate be.”

Tears rolled down Quintanelle’s face.“Take me up. I can’t take it anymore!”

Sisqub folded his wings and lowered his beak. “You are only seeing what lies on the path to where we’re going.”

On May 30th….

“There’s not really anything to debate,” Leyla said. “They want citizenship and will do anything to get it, even if it means destroying the city.”

Pilpen shook his head while clicking his tongue. “That’s what Sisqub wants you to think. The Syndicate is still a megacorp and is working with the other megacorps to completely take over New Delta. “

Leyla rolled her eyes. “Good luck with that…”

Get ready to fly…

  The gunship creaked and moved aside, revealing a Mer pushing it. The Mer’s comrades were visibly crushed and mangled in their twisted coffins.  When the space was big enough, it thumped into the office with an angry look in its eyes. The vehicle was scratched and dented, but still functional. It had all six plasma cannons out and both arms were rifles.

”I ventured to the surface in the name of peace and unity,” the Mer said. Its automated voice was calm, but its clicks were sharp and angry. “But if it’s war you want, it’s war you get!”

The Deltan Skies!

Alfonso smashed his headset against the ground. He trembled with rage, his eyes burned with fury, his jaw clenched tight.

The CDU soldiers stumbled out their craft, some speechless, others crying.

“What was that?” Metara cried through choking sobs.

“The Syndicate’s gigantic fuck you to the city,” Alfonso seethed. “But the fucking has only just begun!”

Chapter 1 will be up to read on May 15.  Join my mailing list to be notified when this book his Amazon, Smashwords and Barnes and Noble.

Ethereal Girls 2 Announcement

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February 19th, 2013

From left to right: Meadow, Phoenix, Liza and Jonola.

From left to right: Meadow, Phoenix, Liza and Jonola.

 

“Stupid fleshlings!” Jonola hissed. “They wouldn’t know a good book if it hit them in the face!”

Jonola, along with Liza, Phoenix and Meadow, were hanging out in Meadow’s room at the Travilah Academy for Powered Students.  Jonola was curled-up on Meadow’s bed next to Liza, who sat on the edge.  Phoenix leaned against the closet while Meadow sat cross-legged on the floor on her mat.

Meadow replied, “Some books fail, others succeed, it’s the nature of publishing.”

“But you’re in the book,” Phoneix said as she fidgeted with a dagger.

Meadow folded her arms. “So? This society just isn’t ready to accept us, that’s all.”

“I don’t care if the book doesn’t sell a hundred copies,” Liza cried, “all I want is for people to stop calling the drawing of me on the book cover ugly! I don’t have an hourglass figure, but otherwise it’s me.”

Jonola ran a hand along her scales. “I don’t have an hourglass figure either but you don’t see me complaining.”

“But the hatred isn’t directed at you, it’s directed almost entirely at me!”

“Oh yes it is. Some idiot fleshing said I had breasts.” Jonola turned her snout up. “That’s an insult to Lamia!”

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Phoenix said, “He was making it all up.” She sighed. “We don’t even know a Stacy.”

Liza’s cell phone buzzed in her pocket. She pulled it out. “I got a text message from Noah.” Her eyes lit up. “It says he’s going to write an Ethereal Girls sequel, just because!”

Jonola uncoiled and slithered up and over Liza’s shoulder to look. She let out a happy hiss while wiggling her forked tongue. “Yes!”

Meadow stood up and stretched with a faint smile on her face. “Does it say what the plot is?”

“No,” Liza said.

Phoenix flipped a dagger in the air and caught it, visibly unmoved. “We’ll find out soon enough.”

Liza added. “Noah also announces that his next release, the K23 Detectives reboot Deltan Skies, will be formally introduced March 4th where it will be given a firm release time frame. He adds that if people like this original book announcement and are interested, they can purchase Ethereal Girls eBooks for 99 cents at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Smashwords. He closes by asking that those who’ve already read the book and enjoyed it, please leave a customer review.”

Jonola slithered off the bed. “That doesn’t make any sense. Who’re the K23 Detectives?”

“It does make sense,” Meadow said, “it just wasn’t meant for us.”

Phoenix looked up. “I often wonder if we don’t really exist, if we’re nothing more than book characters created from Noah’s imagination.”

“Just as long as people accept me,” Liza said, “that’s all that matters.”

Ethereal Girls: Troll my Book, Please!

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February 17th, 2013

As writers, we should focus our promotional efforts on trying to get people to talk about our books (review them, read and recommend them, give them awards, take them to their book groups, write articles or blog posts about them) instead of trying to get people to buy them.-Mary Walters

At the end of January, Ethereal Girls was a dead book. Nobody was talking about it and nobody was buying it. I had dropped the price to 99 cents and relegated it to the back burner. Then on the advice of my editor I posted it on a certain internet forum. They hated it. In fact, they hated it so much they started trolling it. My name started traveling across the internet regarding how atrociously terrible Ethereal Girls is and culminated in a piece on February 13th entitled Ethereal Girls: If You Hate Women but Love Staring at Them. It currently has 290 notes on Tumblr. It read as follows:

Plot: 4 atypical teenage heroines save the world .

If you hate women, but love staring at them, you’ll love the creepy “Ethereal Girls.” To begin with, I excerpted the cover, because I thought the detailed-yet-not-quite-right drawings of underage womens’ breasts and genitals was a little much to put on my blog. (If you must, click through to see the vulvae of your high-school notebook dreams.)

The author forbids any portions of his book to be excerpted without his express consent, so I am unable to provide the actual text here (it’s in the “Look Inside” button hereif you’re truly curious) but I will provide you with a sample of what you might potentially find if you were to plunk down the ten bucks for this flagrant abuse of the English language:

Stacey was wearing a short, tight jean skirt, that was really sexy, and her butt was sticking out, causing it to bulge around her butt. She leaned forward and said “It’s time for cheerleading practice.” The other girls nodded and when they nodded their boobs moved. They all had really big boobs, and round. Wow.

Stacey wondered if the other girls had magical powers. “Does anyone have magic” she thought, and then a big snake woman, who had really big and sexy boobs, came into the gym. “I’m going to use magic.” She said. Her boobs jiggled as she said the thing about magic.

The snake shook it’s tail and hissed, and the other girls said “We don’t have magic. Please save us.” They looked really great and 1 was crying, and it went on her boobs, and the tear went down in the cleavage (between the boobs) and everyone saw it.

The most striking thing about the article is the fake snippet.  Drew, the author,claims that I wouldn’t allow him  to post excerpts…except that I did. The language he’s referring to is boilerplate legalese in the front of the book:

This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in critical articles or reviews.

He can post text from the book because his article is a review. But why instead does he just make up an excerpt that doesn’t reflect anything actually in the book? Because there’s nothing really to troll.

The book isn’t that bad, with mostamazon customer reviews falling in the 3-4 star range until the trolls descended.  The first two chapters are freely available to read here on this site. Drew never actually read any part of the book because if he did, he’d be making fun of Liza fighting a Yakuza cyborg while she’s wearing a pink dress at the end of chapter 2. But even if he did read that section, posting about that would run the risk of people thinking it was awesome and plunking down money for it, and he couldn’t have that. Therefore, he made shit up.

The trolls aren’t really trolling Ethereal Girls, the book; they’re trolling a made-up idea of Ethereal Girls, what they believe the book to be, some creepy fetishistic worship of muscular teenage girls, when it’s really an over-the-top superhero novel. If the cover featured a super masculine boy, nobody would’ve cared…but because its a girl, I’m a perv and the book appears a thousand times more sexual than it actually is. Somehow I’ve managed to push a cultural button which prevents people from taking the book seriously and instead whips them into a frenzy of hate and scorn.

But no matter! By trashing the book, Drew (who has a huge following) spread me and my book across the net. And viola, somebody  mentioned they bought it just to see how bad it was. Exactly what I want.

uwe boll

I refer to this as the Uwe Boll effect.

We all know Uwe Boll makes terrible films (most notably film adaptations of video games) and has done so for years. Here’s the thing: the only reason Boll is still making movies is because people wouldn’t shut about him (the German tax loophole that allowed Boll to make his earlier films was closed in 2007) If people didn’t want Uwe Boll making terrible video game adaptations, they should’ve shut up after Alone in the Dark, but they didn’t and he’s still making movies today.  The reason this happened is that the more people talked about him, the more chance there was for people to watch his films to see how bad they were. I myself am guilty of this, having watched all 3 Bloodrayne films, Postal, Far Cry and In the Name of the King. I played right into Uwe Boll’s pocket.

I used to hate trolls, but now I love them. As Mary Walters said, writers should get people to talk about the book, and trolls are people talking about my book.

So keep going everyone! Troll Ethereal Girls into the ground. Talk about how atrociously awful it is on every corner of the net. Proclaim how Ethereal Girls makes 50 Shades of Grey look like Lady Chatterley’s Lover by comparison. Flood Amazon with one star reviews, the more over-the-top and absurd the better(but please purchase a copy before you leave one). Go ahead, I welcome it with open arms. The more people troll me and my book, the greater the chance somebody curious will buy it, and maybe, just maybe, they’ll like what they find.

K23 Side Story: An Unnatural Love

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January 14th, 2013

Warning the following story deals with mature sexual content. Reader discretion is advised.

—

Out of all the sick, twisted individuals in New Delta, the Deltan Adult Female Brac’tai Love Association, or DAFBLA, had to be near the bottom in Private Detective Felicita Johnson’s estimation. She investigated sex crimes and while she put away individuals who were arguably far worse than DAFBLA, t took advantage of the naïve members of a species not even in the same phylum.

Brac’tai were harmless tentacle creatures that didn’t reproduce like any other creature in Terrall; it was hard to even call their mating practices “sexual.” The process was the exact opposite of how most people assumed it was. Despite that, perverted women preyed on them for their own sexual gratification by making Brac’tai think they were playing “harmless games.” Despite being very smart creatures, hominid sexuality was something they could never understand.

DAFBLA had been around for decades, but law enforcement could never convict them of sex crimes. It was hard to argue in front of Legaltron that what the women were doing was rape, since the Brac’tai were willing, if clueless, participants. Then DAFBLA started purchasing ads on walkway screens in order to recruit new converts at the DAFBLA headquarters in Tower S-13.

This was law enforcement’s chance; DAFBLA was violating prostitution laws. Prostitution was only legal in the Red Light Tower, Tower S-17.  This was not because of moral objections to prostitution, but rather to ensnare the criminal elements who invariably controlled much of it, legal or not. That was done by charging offenders with solicitation for prostitution outside of the Red Light Tower. In many cases, prostitutes would meet their clients in the tower and leave to go elsewhere, which was a crime. Numerous pimps had gone to the Penitentiary because of it.

Now Felicitia had her opportunity. She filed criminal charges with Legaltron, the super computer that acted as New Delta’s court system.  A court date was set for 12/24/10020 at 11:00 in Courtroom D in Legaltron Tower, Tower R-18.

“Now hearing Johnson vs. DAFBLA,” Legaltron’s voice spoke over the loudspeaker. In the front was a giant screen with usual computerized judge and exhibit sections. “Speaking for the Defendants is Srintella Casbren. Both sides will present opening remarks during which there will be no objections from either side.”

Felicita and Strintella sat on tables on opposite sides of the main aisle. Srintella was a very high priced Deltan elf lawyer, pretty and dressed in a power suit. The reason why she was defending them was because she was a member herself. Sitting next to her was DAFBLA’s president Leonor Cummings. She was a fat, middle aged human with terrible skin who had to have more problems getting men to screw her then ogre females did. Not even ogre males would touch her.

Sitting next to Felicita was her assistant, a young human female named Bella Goslen.

Behind them in the galleries, were dozens of DAFBLA hominid members, of varying races, ages and attractiveness.

Felicita would go first. She stood. “My case is very simple. DAFBLA is a prostitution ring that operates inside their headquarters in Tower S-13. Their ads are little more than solicitations for hominid females to pay to have sex with Brac’tai, who themselves are essentially DAFBLA’s slaves. The evidence I will present will be simple and fact-based. They are soliciting for prostitution outside of the Red Light Tower. Nothing more, nothing less.”

Felicitia sat. There were boos and jeers from the audience.

Next it was Strintella’s turn. She stood and began to pace around the front of the courtroom as she spoke. “The Deltan Adult Female Brac’tai Love Association is about love between an adult hominid female and a Brac’tai. The plaintiff would have you believe that Brac’tai cannot feel sexual love. They can. DAFBLA is simply a dating service that pairs up women and Brac’tai for a relationship of exploration. The ads we ran were really no different than other dating services. The dues women pay are merely administrative. Furthermore, we will show that Ms. Johnson is after us because she has an agenda. She is unfairly persecuting us for practicing alternative sexualities.” The audience clapped as she sat.

“How are we going to beat that?” Bella whispered. “She’s not wrong.”

“Don’t worry,” Felicitia said. “Trust me.”

“It is now time for formal arguments and evidence presentation,” Legaltron said. “Plaintiffs will go first. Objections are now allowed.”

Felicita stood. “I would like to call Leonor Cummings to the witness stand!” There was murmuring as Leonor and Strintella debated intensely. There was nothing Strintella could do to stop her from calling Leonor.

A chair on a platform raised from the floor front and center. Leonar got up, went to the platform and sat down.

Felicita stood in front of her. “Ms. Cummings, I have one question for you: How do Brac’tai reproduce?”

“Objection! Question is irrelevant!” Strintella screamed.

“Objection overruled!” Legaltron replied. “Relevance has yet to be determined. Witness must answer question.”

“Umm… well… A male Brac’tai sticks a tentacle into—“

“Wrong! If you had bothered to learn anything about Brac’tai beyond how to get them to serve your own sexual fantasies, you would know how they mate!” Felicita pointed at the screen. “I present exhibit A, a video taken in the Terrillwyn of a male and a female Brac’tai mating!”

The room darkened and a video appeared of the screen. A male and a female floated a few feet away from each other in a slow moving jungle stream. They looked completely identical with six arm tentacles, four foot tentacles, two eye tentacles and large gaping mouths. The male spit white goop into the water. The female spit greyish goop into the water.  Then both Brac’tai stayed still and watched the goop as it melded and congealed. The video sped up and showed a tiny Brac’tai a few inches in a diameter forming out of the substances. When the Brac’tai was fully formed with fully working eyes, it let out a high-pitched meep and both parents swam off in opposite directions since the tiny Brac’tai was fully self-sufficient. Fortunately for the rest of Terrall, while the Brac’tai were prolific breeders, their young were easy prey for aquatic predators.

The lights came back on as the entire DAFBLA contingent sat stunned.

“Ms. Cummings,” Felicita said, “you clam that DAFBLA is a dating service, that you are exploring the love between a hominid female and a Brac’tai. But how you claim it’s mutual when you can clearly see that Brac’tai quantify sexuality in a completely different manner? Brac’tai certainly aren’t getting sexual gratification out of it. They aren’t capable of that. Therefore, DAFBLA cannot be about love. It is a merely a way for women to find sexual release and therefore is a prostitution service. The women are paying for the opportunity to meet and screw Brac’tai.”

“Objection!” Strintella screamed at the top of lungs, tears running down her cheeks. “The Brac’tai aren’t paid!”

“Objection sustained! Plaintiff must prove the Brac’tai receive material benefits from DAFBLA. Unless Plaintiff has more questions, witness can return to her seat.” Lenora scurried back to the defendant’s corner.

Felicitia smiled. “I present exhibit B, a Biogenomics invoice dated 10/15/10020. It’s for a delivery of five thousand gallons of nutritional fluid, plus three resting tanks, to DAFBLA headquarters. This delivery date corresponds to the date three more Brac’tai became ‘available’ in addition to the ten they already had.”

“Objection! Exhibit is a forgery!”

Both Felicita and Bella burst out laughing.

“Objection overruled!” Legaltron said. “Defendants have no merit on which to base this claim due to document being verified by Biogenomics.”

“The defense would like to change its plea to guilty,” Strintella sobbed.

“Plea change accepted. What punishment do the plaintiffs seek?”

“Complete disbanding of DAFBLA, your honor,” Felicita said. “The Brac’tai under their employment will be free to do as they please.”

“Do the defendants wish to contest this?”  Legaltron asked.

Strinella hung her head low. “No.”

And Felicita had won a stunning but easy victory. All she really did was show them their delusions and the defense crumbled. Sure, some women would continue to prey on Brac’tai for selfish sexual gratification, but the organization itself was finished and its Brac’tai slaves free.

Good riddance.

—

Read more side stories!

 

K23 Side Story: Sandworm Rodeo

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January 13th, 2013

Yes, this was an actual story!

This story is what spawned that cover!

 

Payol Chincrusher was going to die. The orc was dehydrated and standing in 110-degree heat a few hundred yards from the Meran Ocean, a vast body of water which bordered the Alamaro Wastes. He stumbled over the flat burning sand and collapsed.

This was what happened when you screwed over the Mol Borang, a large hijacking ring that stole millions of credits worth of Barrenlands ore every year. He snitched on them after his bosses refused to give him a fair share, letting the powers that be know when a major heist was planned. Dozens of Mol Borang were killed. In return, the Mol Borang dumped him in the Wastes to die, a far more insidious death than just shooting him.

As his consciousness began to fade, he noticed something odd. There were dozens of eye tentacles poking up a few inches above the sand in a long line parallel to the shore. Payol instantly knew what they belonged to: Brac’tai, the amphibious round tentacle things that spawned in Elemchi’s waterways and then drifted around the world, wherever the ocean currents would take them. A bunch always ended up in New Delta, working for Ashram-Uriah but many never did.

Despite where they were, these Brac’tai were very much alive, as every eye was focused squarely on him.

He was saved.

Brac’tai were living water filters, able to survive in all but the most polluted waterways, their bodies filtering everything but necessary nutrients. Unfortunately for most city-states, using Brac’tai to filter their water was impractical and they would need millions to make any serious difference.

“Help me,” Payol moaned.

A sandy tentacle came out of the ground, wrapped around Payol, and a brac’tai pulled itself up so that its large gaping mouth was flat with the ground, becoming a goblet of cool water, which the brac’tai sponged in. This would be highly embarrassing if anyone saw him, but life was life. He drank.

Then Payol notice the sand that shifted upwards with the brac’tai was wet. This made sense being so close to the water that he could hear the drone of the ocean. Being buried in the sand must have let them gather and conserve water while their skin let them breathe. Still, what they were doing here was somewhat of a mystery. There was nothing here.

The answer came when the ground began to shake and everyone, Bac’tai and orc alike, began to rise out of the sand to massive cheers. The Brac’tai had attached themselves to bumps on the skin of the Alamaro’s sole natural inhabitant: sandworms. Sandworms were hundreds of feet long and slid over and beneath the sand, living off microbes in the sand. They were what made the Alamaro Wastes uninhabitable everywhere but the City of Sands. This was due to the sandworms being unable to pass through rock, a fact which also made sure the worms stayed out of the rest of Hominia.

As the worm rose, the Brac’tai that had saved Payol turned around, and Parol held on for dear life.

He saw that they were towards the front of the worm, where its large gaping mouth was located. Its mouth contained several teeth, which loosened the packed sand at deeper depths for easier digestion. The ingested sand would travel through the worm’s giant stomach and would be expelled out the animal‘s rear end. While they weren’t carnivorous creatures, standing in a worm’s way meant you’d be swallowed, digested and expelled.

The sandworm, once it had surfaced, tilted itself upwards and then slammed back down, to even louder cheers.

Payol began to rock as the worm contracted and relaxed, pulling itself along the ground, the bumps on its flesh giving it traction on the fine sand. The Brac’tai began to slap the worm’s rough skin, causing it to move faster. The rocking turned into a constant vibration as it accelerated.

The Brac’tai then pulled at once to the right and the sandworm turned inland. The wind was now beginning to rush against Payol’s face as the sandworm reached speeds so fast the front of the worm lifted off the sand as it traveled.

The Brac’tai bounced and the sandworm dived into the sand. Payol shut his eyes and held his breath as the sand tore his soaked clothes off his body. His thick orc hide stayed intact, clutching the cool slimy Brac’tai even tighter.

The Brac’tai leaned back and the sandworm rushed up and launched into the air. At the apex the sandworm turned down. For a split-second, Payol was weightless, floating in the air. A rush went to his head.

He began to cry out in joy with the Brac’tai as the worm dived back into the sand, and then launch again.

Up and down, up and down they went, over and over again in an exhilarating ride. How long this lasted he didn’t know, but the ride eventually ended and the worm sank into the sand far enough that Payol was back on the sand.

The City of Sands glistened in the afternoon sun, the worm as close as it would go.

Payol patted the Brac’tai. “Thank you.” They all chirped.  Payol stood up and walked a few feet. Then the sandworm began to rise back up as the brac’tai waved goodbye.

The sand began to burn and Payol dashed towards civilization, food and clothes. The sandworm turned around, taking the Brac’tai back towards the ocean. They would probably just soak up more water and go for another ride or two before heading back into the oceans, departing for other ports of call.

As much Payol wanted to stay with them, he had other things to do, like deal with the Mog Boral and maybe start a business sending tours on sandworm rides.

As he reached the City, an enormous metal box, Payol dismissed the latter idea.

The expense from lost clothes would probably put him out of business.

K23 Side Stories Season 2 Premiere: Finality

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January 13th, 2013

For my next book,  I’ll be returning to K23 Detectives with a 87k word expansion and revision of A Clear and Feathered Danger called Deltan Skies. The current novellas will stay for sale until February at their original pricing of .99 cents individually and 2.99 for the K23 Detectives Collection. Sandworm Rodeo and Other Stories has already been removed.

Over the next few months and into Deltan Skies release in May, I will be releasing brand new set of side stories. Some are selected stories from Sandworm Rodeo. Others are brand new. Current stories will be edited and one or two removed to reflect changes that Deltan Skies will bring since its essentially a franchise reboot. Today is one  of the heavier stories from Sandworm Rodeo.

—

Every time the clockwork gear clicked in the clock on the mantel along the wall in his study, Alvar Tanner’s heart skipped a beat and his trepidation rose.

14:25:37.

14:25:38.

14:25:39.

His study was silent. He had sent his family away. He wanted to be alone.

14:25:44.

14:25:45.

14:25:46.

The plush armchair he sat in was no longer comforting. His clothes were soaked with sweat.

14:25:58.

14:25:59.

14:26:00.

Four more minutes!

The seconds were counting up to 14:30:00, when he would reach one hundred years and a day…when his time would finally come to an end. He was in great shape at one hundred, looking like he was in his early forties.

That was all thanks to the arcane age-extending treatments he’d paid through the nose for. Every year since his late-twenties, a mage would say a few incantations, inject Alvar with some concoctions and Alvar would physically age at a fifth of his normal rate, starting from the moment of the treatment. Regardless of when one started the treatment, they’d always die at the same age: one hundred years and a day. At that moment, one would suddenly look their age then promptly die. And if they missed a treatment, the years they‘d “skipped“ would instantly catch up with them.

14:26:55.

14:26:56.

14:26:57.

Most who underwent the treatments until a hundred simply sedated themselves so they died in their sleep. Alvar couldn’t sleep. Most underwent the treatments to remain in good health until the end. Alvar underwent the treatments because he feared death. He was terrified of losing all that he had.

14:27:30.

14:27:31.

14:27:32.

Alvar was rich, the owner of a successful aircraft manufacturer called Ansala. He lived in a huge luxury apartment filled with things gathered from his travels over the four continents. He had been married to the love of his life for seventy years, though he had lost her when she hit a hundred and a day a few months before. He had four children, eight grandchildren and thirteen great-grandchildren.

14:28:00.

14:28:01.

14:28:02.

A Uthiran acquaintance named Baroglong who was pushing eight-hundred told Alvar he was lucky. There was a reason all Uthirans eventually went mad. It was the only way they could deal with the time. His acquaintance was obsessive-compulsive, nearly eating Alvar when he moved a chair out of place in the Uthiran’s warehouse den. Alvar didn’t care, he still wanted to live for a thousand years.

14:28:59.

14:29:00.

14:29:01.

Less than a minute to go. There was nothing anyone could do. The most advanced medical technology in the world would not able to extend his life. Any more treatments were pointless.

14:29:35.

14:29:36.

14:29:37.

His time was up. He could do nothing but reluctantly give in. He held up a small mirror and looked at himself.

14:29:58.

15:29:59.

14:30:00!

The clock chimed on the mantel and continued clicking away, but Alvar didn’t hear it. Alvar had gone deaf. He could no longer see himself; he’d went blind.

His hair fell out. His teeth rotted. His skin wrinkled and sagged. His bones went brittle. He took one last wheezing breath and his heart stopped…

But that was not the end, not yet. His soul had one stop to make on its journey to oblivion. It was a limbo of sorts where all the souls of the sentient went, a place where Thagnar the Dead stripped souls of their attachments to their previous life. It was these attachments which would keep them whole. The souls of plants, insects, microbes and the like skipped this step, as they formed no attachments; most were not even aware they were ever alive at all.

The experience in that limbo was different for each soul, mirroring the life they had lived. For Alvar, he was sitting exactly where he was, still in his forties, but with one small difference. His wife, Osana, stood in front of him looking radiant and beautiful in her prime.

She walked to him and took his hand. “It’ll be ok, Alvar, there’s nothing to be afraid of. Death comes to all things in time. It ‘s the way of the universe.”

“But I didn’t want to go. It’s not fair!” He pulled his hand away.

She bent down and took his head in her heads, forcing him to stare into her sparkling brown eyes. “I didn’t want to die either, but I accepted it and slept through the end. Thagnar allowed me to stay here and take the final steps into nothingness with you.”

He pushed her back. “You’re not Osana! The last thing she did before she took the pills was saying her final goodbyes, leaving no lingering regrets!”

Osana transformed into Thagnar the Dead, a hooded figure with skeletal hands. All one could see of his face was glowing red eyes. “Osana was easy,” the deity said in a deep baritone. “She split apart with little effort.”

Alvar crossed his legs and arms and looked away. “You’re evil!”

Thagnar laughed. “I am not evil. I am necessary, While Illwyn can always form new souls from the infinite energy, without me and the end I bring, life is not worth living. Let me show you something.”

Alvar and the chair found themselves in a massive cavern with a large opening to the outside on a wall and a brook running through it. In the center of the cavern was a humongous blue Uthiran, at least a hundred feet long, curled up on the ground. Its eyes were glazed over. Its mouth hung open, a pool of drool forming on the ground. Occasionally an electric spark traveled over its scales and sent twitches through its wings and tail.

“We are on Uthira, mere moments after you died. No one here can notice your presence as you are now simply divine energy. That Uthiran lying there, named Imsomon, is twenty-five hundred years old, older than New Delta itself. Look at him,” Thagnar pointed a bony finger, “He’s catatonic. The mental stress of seeing empires rise and fall and mountains erode into hills has left his mind fractured and broken. He spends every day sitting in that very spot, staring off into space, growing ever larger and more powerful even though most of him will never move again under his own power.”

Another blue Uthiran two-thirds Imsomon’s size slowly walked in carrying a torn carcass of something. “Dinner, father,” she said to him in Dragon with a soft tone. She put the carcass down, tore off a hunk of meat and slowly chewed it. She pried Imsomon’s mouth open a little further and spit the meat inside. Imsomon swallowed.

“You are watching a daughter’s love for her father, a love that over the millennia-and-a-half of her life has become an obsession. All Thaxia does is care for her catatonic father: Feeding him regurgitated meat; giving him water from the brook; cleaning his orifices and removing his waste. She feeds from the same carcass, drinks from the same water, lives in the same cave. Her identity is his identity.”

“But why?” Alvar asked. “I thought Uthirans stopped dealing with their parents completely after a few centuries.”

“For many that is true; but not for all. Thaxia was the strongest of her brood, the one Imsomon was proud of the most. He took her under his wing and molded her into a strong and powerful dragon even as his mental state deteriorated. She never moved far, and when he finally went completely catatonic a millennia ago—“

“You can’t be serious!” Alvar screamed.

Thaxia began collecting water for him in her jaw.

“It is true,” Thagnar replied. “Imsomon has been laying here and Thaxia has been caring for him in the exact same way for the last three-hundred sixty-five thousand days… give or take a thousand or two.”

Thaxia was holding her father’s jaw up as she poured water down his throat.

Thagnar continued, “When he dies, she will die as well. Her purpose for living this long will be gone.”

Alvar put his head in his hands. If he could cry he would. “Stop this! I don’t want to see it anymore!”

Thangar waved his hand and Alvar’s face turned to look at the Uthirans. Thaxia walked back to the brook to collect more water.

“No. You must that learn that the longer you live beyond your time, the more of a relic and a burden you become. They have both lived long beyond their time, stuck in an endless cycle of repetition because there is nothing else. But do not worry, I have shown you them because that seemingly infinite cycle of days is not infinite after all.”

Thaxia came back with a second mouthful, but let it splash on the ground when she felt no breath. Imsomom’s body was limp. His eyes were closed. There were no more sparks. Thaxia sniffed and nudged her father a few times. She let out a pathetic roar and collapsed next to him. Her breathing slowed, and then stopped.

The cavern vanished and Alvar stood in a black void with Thagnar in front of him. The deity extended his hand. “So now do you understand why all things must come to an end?”

Alvar nodded. “Yes, I do. My life ended when it was still very good. I am glad that I have lived a long and fulfilling existence. My time has passed.”

He took Thagnar’s hand.

In an instant Alvar Tanner ceased to exist. His soul was decimated, his existence no more. His soul’s energy was now in Illwyn’s care. She would form it into a completely new soul which would give life to someone yet to be born.

Why Gangnam Style Beat Baby on Youtube

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November 27th, 2012

Not long ago PSY’s “Gangnam Style” surpassed Justin Bieber’s “Baby” to become the #1 most watched video  on YouTube. When I started writing this, it had 829 million hits. I went to bed and by the time I woke up, it went up 4 million to 833 million. It will be have plenty more by the time you read this. Baby is at 805 million and has been around there for awhile. But in every article I’ve read about PSY’s rise to international stardom, nobody ever really talks about why a song released in Korea by a Korean for Koreans in Korean about a Korean neighborhood became an international sensation.  Articles about Gangnam Style’s record hits don’t talk about why he beat out Bieber, who happens to have the same manager. But it’s not hard to figure out with some simple analysis.

Bieber vs. PSY

Let’s start with Baby:

This song is terrible to everyone but Bieber’s fan base, myself included. Its a pubescent boy singing to pubescent girls about pubescent love, with Ludacris chiming in about his adolescent crush in probably the worst performance of his that I’ve ever heard (and I like Ludacris). The video itself is completely unremarkable and generic, it isn’t anything unto itself, which all great music videos are.

Baby is at 805 million hits after 2 years, with the video reaching 600,000 hits after a year and a half and getting the remaining 200 million over the next 16 months. Keep this in mind.

Now onto Gangnam Style:

It’s fun, it’s catchy and it has a very specific dance associated with it, guaranteeing its rotation at dance parties for years to come.  The video is one of the best music videos I’ve ever seen. While what he’s making fun of is Korean, the images are universal and can apply to a lot of posh neighborhoods, like the horse barn, the dance studio, the aerobics classes and even the yuppie-looking people on the pink bus.

The chart for Gangnam Style tells a different story than Baby did. The time frame might be shorter, but that’s the entire point. Extrapolate the graph out to Baby’s time frame and the growth will seem be exponential before leveling off.  Events such as PSY’s appearance at the VMAs September 9th merely capitalized on the song’s growing popularity.

But there’s another side to this. Gangnam Style’s success marks an important milestone in the music industry: music has been democratized.

Universal Appeal

It used to be that an artist would find international success based largely on the whims of record companies. When I went to Greece in 2003, finding songs I liked over there here in the US was nearly impossible because they weren’t in US record stores or played on the radio. Even when the iTunes store took off, finding international hits was still dependent on record companies releasing the albums in the US iTunes store.

To put Gangam Style’s importance in perspective, let’s compare with another fun, catchy song with a specific dance that went viral a few years ago: Daler Mehndi’s Tunak Tunak Tun.

Now if you watch this video closely, you’ll notice the dances are pretty similar in some ways (the circular arm wave variation). While I don’t know if PSY has seen this video, to me he’s channeling Dalar Mehndi’s goofy charm through the entirety of Gangnam Style.

But why didn’t Tunak Tunak become a monster international hit despite enjoying international popularity? First,  Dalar didn’t capitalize. He didn’t appear at the VMAs and he didn’t release Tunak Tunak in the west. To be fair, however, Tunak went viral when YouTube was still largely a novelty and the corporate presence was virtually nonexistent. His video going viral meant a lot less than Gangnam Style going viral now.

Second, unlike other entertainment media, like books and movies, music has an never-fail formula for success and by that I mean this formula:

Or more simply: Score = (w1 x f1) + (w2 x f2) + (w3 x f3) + (w4 x f4), etc I’ll let Wired explain:

The “w”s are “weights,” or musical features like tempo, time signature, song duration, loudness and how energetic it is. Musical style doesn’t stand still, and the weights have to be tweaked to match the era. In the ’80s, for example, low-tempo, ballad-esque musical styles were more likely to become a hit. Plus, before the ’80s, the “danceability” of a song was not particularly relevant to its hit potential.

Once the algorithm has churned out these weights it’s simply a case of mining your proposed song for these exact same features (the “f”s in the equation) and working out whether they correspond to the trends of the time. This gives you a hit-prediction score.

But I can boil all that down to one word: infectious. Doesn’t matter the genre, doesn’t matter the decade, if a song can get into people’s head and never leave, it’ll be a hit song.

And Gangnam Style is infectious. It conforms to the pretty universal sound of today’s pop music worldwide which is basically electronic dance music, with the difference being whether or not the song is rapped or sung and what language it’s in (If you don’t believe me go pick random J-pop, K-pop, Euro pop and American Pop songs, you’ll see).  Tunak lacked universal music appeal. Dancing to Tunak Tunak feels like you’re dancing to Indian Pop music, while dancing to Gangnam Style doesn’t feel like you’re dancing to K-pop.

Conclusion

Enter a song that confirms to universal music tastes with a video that has universal appeal which is featured on a video website with universal reach and the recipe for a monstrous hit is born. Justin Bieber, as talented as he is, just doesn’t have the pull beyond his target demographic. Once they finished gushing over the song, there wasn’t the mass appeal to propel the video further beyond the haters.

In addition, you can bet other acts will attempt to follow in PSY’s footsteps to have international monster hits. However, most will only achieve more modest international success because Gangnam Style hit all the variables in the right places at the right time, which is extraordinarily difficult to do. PSY didn’t even come close to matching his own success with another version of Gangnam Style featuring the vocals of Hyuna, the woman dancing with PSY towards the end of the original video. But PSY’s a Korean cultural icon with a ten year career, he’ll be fine. And Bieber will be fine even if his career tanks because he can live off his earnings for the rest of his life.

Finally, while one can decry the homogenized nature of pop music world-wide, it’s merely a reflection of the universal nature of the Internet. If people can easily access music from across the world via YouTube and other sites, it’s only natural that tastes will will converge and artists will follow suit. While there’s always been a genre called World, that’s always been about showcasing varying musical traditions, not bringing them together.  You can kind of say Gangnam Style is more worldly than “world” music, something to ponder.

I’ll leave you off with another K-pop video I came across and loved: Tarantallegra by Junsu. This is as much a result of the world convergence of pop music as Gangnam Style, for reasons that will become blatantly evident :

Ethereal Girls is out, right now!

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October 22nd, 2012


I’ve released Ethereal Girls early because the book was done and promoting is easier if the book is out. The ebook costs $2.99 with the print version costs $10.99. Right now, the ebook is available on Amazon, Smashwords and Drive Through Fiction, with the print version available on Createspace. The Nook version will be available this evening(and added to this post and the main Ethereal Girls page).

Heroism comes in all shapes and sizes…

In Medieval Europe, four mystical weapons were forged in order to combat malevolent spirits – vile entities seeking nothing more than to spread misery and chaos across the universe. Centuries later, only one weapon remains to protect Earth. That weapon, the Axe of Boren, falls into the hands of teenage Liza while she is driving home from cheerleading practice, transforming her into a hulking warrior of immense strength and endurance. At the same time, her best friend Macie is twisted into a psychopathic murderer by one of the Axe’s counterparts, the corrupted Sword of Boren, and goes on a gruesome killing spree.

But just as Liza and Macie are headed for battle, the most powerful evil spirit in generations appears, unleashing an army of monstrous cannibals on Washington, D.C. In order to defeat the spirit, Liza must ally with three odd girls: a sickly waif with macabre teleportation abilities; a member of a snake-like race called the Lamia who wants nothing more than to be a human teenager; and the 107th reincarnation of an ancient goddess who may know far more about the mystical weapons than she lets on. But even with her new friends, Liza faces a near impossible task. Macie is obsessed with destroying her regardless of the devastation unfolding around them…

Purchase ebook at Amazon 

Purchase ebook at Smashwords

Purchase Ebook at Drive Through Fiction

Purchase the print version at Createspace

Read the first two chapters

Conflict Resolution 1 and Conflict Resolution 2

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October 17th, 2012

Seeing people enjoyed Election Night 2012 has made me go back and find the other “fake reality cards” I’ve made over the years. I’ve found 2. These are Conflict Resolution cards from 2006 and 2007. Note that these were written with people who were alive or in power at time. Enjoy.
Conflict Resolution 1(from 2006)
The United Nations Presents Conflict Resolution, live this sunday night only on PPV from the United Nations Headquarters in New York City.
Main Event: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Vs. President George Bush in a Punjabi Prisons match
The outspoken Iranian President issued a challange to President Bush to settle their differences in a Punjabi Prisions match. If Bush wins, Iran dismantles thier nuclear program. If Ahmadinejad wins, America must pull out of Iraq and leave Iran alone.

Tune in this sunday to watch the match to decide the fate of the Middle East.

Also order to watch these explosive matches from around the globe:

Sheik Hassan Nasrallah vs. Isreali Prime-minister Ehud Olmert with special guest referree PLO President Mahmoud Abbas

Can’t disarm Hezbollah by invading them? Try the ring. Live this sunday, the Hezbollah/Isreali conflict will come to an end with a 1-2-3. But with the palastinian prescence in the match, who knows the outcome.

President Hugo Chavez vs. Prime Minister Tony Blair
In a last ditch effort to save face with his party, Tony Blair has issued a challange to Hugo Chavez. If he wins, his popularity will go up. If he loses…
Raul Castro said he would be at ringside, what part will he play? Tune in this sunday to find out.

North-Korean Premier Kim Jong Ill vs. Chinese President Hu Jintao in an exploding barbed-wire deathmatch

China tried to reach out to North Korea in setting up talks about its nuclear program, but North Korea brushed them off. Hu Jintao didn’t like being emberassed on the international stage. Live this sunday, he will defend his honor in an exploding barbed-wire deathmatch with the barbed wire and mines imported directly from the DMZ.

López Obrador and two mystery luchadors vs. Felipe Calderón and two mystery luchadors in a Lucha Libre six-man tag match

Even after recount after recount, Obrador will not admit defeat. Live this sunday, the Mexican presidentship will be determined once and for all in a classic 6-man two-ref lucha match. Each candidate will be the team leader and will invite two luchadors each to help him in his battle.

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa vs. Tamil Tiger political leader for the east S. Elilan in a Cambodian First-Blood Match

In a latch ditch effort to end the violence in a more than quarter-century long civil war, the fate of Sri-Lanka will be decided in a Cambodian First-Blood Match. The rules are simply, first person to critically injure thier opponent, wins.

The Robert Mugabe Open Invitational
The President of Zimbabwe has issued a challange that he can beat anyone in the entire world because he’s that damn good, or he’ll resign and give the winner five million Z-dollars. Who will show up to face him? Tune in this Sunday to find out.

Conflict Resolution II(from 2007):

The United Nations presents Conflict Resolution II, live this Sunday night only on PPV, live from the United Nations Headquarters in New York City,Last year’s Conflict Resolution saw Felipe Calderón secure his Mexican Presidency in a high flying Lucha match with the help of Super Parka and Rey Mysterio Sr. It also saw President Bush emerge bloody and beaten but victorious from the Punjabi Prisons match where he faced Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.The Cambodian First-Blood Match shocked everyone by being the match of the night.This year’s card will be even more explosive and edge of your seat than last years.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki vs. Blackwater CEO Erik Prince in a Baghdad Rope Match. With Blackwater on the defensive over his company’s actions, Erik Prince had enough and said, “If everyone hates me so much, why doesn’t somebody fight me?” Al-Malaki accepted and two will meet in Baghdad Rope Match. The two will be strapped together and in each corner there will be an explosive device that will explode when someone touches it. To win, one must send them into a corner and blow them up.

Who gets blown up? Tune into find out.

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe vs. TBA

Last year’s open challenge from Mugabe to anyone that if they beat him, he’d step down and they’d get five million Z-dollars, was a sham as Mugabe brought out some half-starved political prisoner and beat him senseless in the ring. Mugabe, this year has once again put out a challenge that if his opponent wins, he will step down and they will will ten million Z-dollars.

However, this year the UN has vowed that Mugabe will not bring out a jobber as as voting for Mugabe’s opponent will happen online at www.conflictresolutioncard.org and the winner will face Mugabe. To prevent cheating, only one vote per IP address and if any irregularities are found, Mugabe will automatically face Zimbabwe Opposition Leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who is also heavily favored to win the vote.

Who will face Mugabe? Do your part and vote!

North Korean leader Kim Jong Ill vs. South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun

In a nasty display, Ill ambushed and beat Moo-Hyun when the South Korean leader visited Ill in Pyong-Yang for peace-talks. In order to prevent the cease-fire from ending, both leaders will fight it out at Conflict Resolution. While winning will cause one country to absorb the other, combat in the ring will hopefully prevent combat on the ground in Korea.

Benazir Bhutto vs. Pakistani President Pervez Musharrafin a No Holds Barred Match. 
After Bhutto was almost killed by a bomb trying to return to Pakistan, she blamed Musharraf, who blamed radical Islamists. Bhutto would have none of it and challenged Musharraf to a street fight to end the back and forth bickering. Now the two will meet and the future of Pakistan hangs in the balance.

Al Qaeda has also vowed to interfere in the match, will they? Anything goes!

Burmese/Myanmarian leader Senior Gen. Than Shwe Vs. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in a ladder match. 

Tired of democracy crackdowns, the UN has set up a ladder match between Shwe and Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of Pro-Democarcy movement in Burma. Hanging above the ring will be a briefcase containing a declaration that the country will either be called Burma or Myanmar depending on the winner. It’s really more of a symbol, as if Shwe wins, Kyi will be executed in the middle of the ring, or if Ms. Kyi wins, the Junta will be overthrown and a democratically elected-government will be ushered in.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan Vs. US President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin in a two out three falls tag-team match.

Last year Bush beat Ahmadinejad to dismantle Iran’s nuclear program, but Iran defied the US and is continuing on its Nuclear Path. The two leaders looked to battle again in the ring. However, the stakes have been raised. Turkey created an alliance with Iran because of anger over the bill calling the Armenian killings during World War 1 “a genocide” and the attacks by the PPK and Bush’s unwillingness to act.

Both countries put out a challenge to Bush for a handicap match. But then Vladimir Putin stepped in with an offer to be Bush’s tag-team partner and make the match a 2/3 falls tag team match. All sides agreed and the match was signed.

Now all eyes are on the match, the fate of this match could possibly completely shift the balance of power in the world. But what is Putin’s role in all of this? Why did he, out of the blue, extend the offer? Can Bush trust him? Can Ahmadinejad and Erdogan trust each other as their hatred of the US is the only thing keeping them together?

Find out this Sunday in a sure to be blockbuster match.

Main Event: Leaders of various Sudanese Rebel factions vs. Sudanese Government and Janjaweed Leaders in a Genocide Cage match. 

The Darfur conflict has turned into a humanitarian crisis with no end in sight, with massive genocide and other atrocities committed by both sides. The UN has declared that at Conflict Resolution the Darfur crisis must end in a Genocide Games match.

In the match there are two teams made up of four leaders from each side. An extra ring will be erected next to the first one and a cage erected around both. At the beginning of the match one man from both sides enter the cage and every five minutes another participant will enter from one side, the order decided by coin toss. Once all eight men have entered, the winning sides will the one who knocks out or critically injures three members of the opposing team.

What is not know is who will actually show up and fight, as it was difficult to get leaders to show up to just diplomatic talks. Therefore, in order to spur the leaders to show up, the match has been declared the official main event and will headline the show.

The first four leaders from both sides to show up will be in the match. If eight do not show up and the sides are unequal  the side with the most men present will automatically win. If both sides are equal then the match will be a one on one, tag, or six man match in the cage structure. In neither side shows up at all, the winner will be determined by UN general assembly voting.

How will the conflict end? Will there actually be the advertised Match or even a match at all? There’s only one way to find out. Order now!

–
I’ll probably go back and create a brand new one for 2012, stay tuned.

Guest Post: Oh, Captain, my Captain… by Phoenix

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October 14th, 2012

After forty-six years, Gene Roddenberry’s high-concept idea has spawned six television series, eleven feature films with a twelfth coming in 2013. There have also been books, games, conventions and merchandising galore. Even with all the interviews, documentaries and public appearances, October 2012 will see a first-time gathering of five Star Trek captains as Destination Star Trek London brings

William Shatner, Patrick Stewart, Avery Brooks, Kate Mulgrew and Scott Bakula together for a weekend of fan delight.

Ever since the release of the third TV series, there has been debate over which captain is the best. They all have their strengths and weaknesses, and every fan has opinions. Unfortunately, the issue has only become more clouded with the addition of each new character to the ranks of Starfleet’s elite. Let’s take a chronological look at how I stack them up.

Captain James Kirk

(Shatner) is the equivalent of Sean Connery’s James Bond. He was the first captain for many if not most fans, starring in two series (one animated) and four feature films before anyone even conceived of the others. He’s the gold-shirt standard against which the others are judged. A product of his time, the captain the sixties gave us in Kirk was young for a ship’s captain and Starfleet’s youngest ever at the time. He was dynamic, an outstanding go-getter who showed Starfleet Command he could handle the center seat, patrol the frontier and represent the United Federation of Planets in a responsible fashion. He’s also been called a cowboy diplomat, considered the most likely captain to turn a confrontation into a shooting match. I’ve often felt this was an unfair assessment as I never felt he was prone to getting the ship into a fight without provocation anymore than he violated the Prime Directive (it applied to lower level developingcultures, not stagnant ones). Granted, even though he’s proven himself more than capable of talking his way out of tough spots, he seldom shied away from a brawl, mixing it up with his first officer on a few occasions and certainly engaging in the most swordplay of the bunch. Without a doubt, he would be the first to draw a phaser at the sound of trouble. He would also top the list in…let’s call them Intimate First Contacts. Could this be the reason he liked to lead so many away missions? I’d like to think that had more to do with an exuberant spirit of exploration, which fit his general mandate, but that could be a close call.

Captain Jean-Luc Picard

(Stewart) is the oldest of the lot, bringing with that years of level-headed experience and a manner that says he’s used to having his orders followed. His biggest claim to fame came early in his career as first officer of the Stargazer, taking command of the ship when her captain was killed during a twenty-five year exploration mission. Rather than limp home, Picard stepped up and pressed on, cementing his image as a leader. For me, he gained a reputation as least likely to shoot first…or shoot back…or shoot at all, sometimes. Come on, man, do something! He seldom handled a phaser and loved to talk. They all loved to give speeches when the situation arose, but he did it with the Shakespearean voice of authority. He didn’t do a lot of brawling, though we were told deep into his series run of an impressive bar brawl that cost him his heart. He was a diplomat and explorer first, with a love of archaeology, and a fighter second. He kept his away mission and IFC counts low, leaving that sort of messiness to his younger, more expendable officers.

Captain Benjamin Sisko

(Brooks) was first introduced to us as a commander. He’s unique to our little group in several ways. We were there to see him become a captain, he had command of a space station rather than a ship on extended missions, and he was married right up till we watched him become a widower and single father. I believe he was also the only musician and chef of the captains. As a full-grown dad, Sisko’s mellifluous speeches to any troublemakers also had the option of being accompanied by an ass-whooping. Captain’s choice. (Note: he put Q on his ass once and never had to deal with him a second time) As a grieving widower, single dad, officer and gentleman, he also kept his IFC count low. He was very professional, only occasionally looking for situational loopholes in regulations. He also spent a fair amount of our time with him on the front line of a war against a formidable alien force. Sisko was a complex character. He didn’t always come out on top in his encounters, but he had the heart to keep fighting and win in the end.

Captain Katherine Janeway

(Mulgrew) like Sisko found herself in a unique situation, though hers could be seen as the opposite of his: where he operated from a static base, she had none and no support network. Our time with Captain Janeway was mostly about the odyssey of returning to Federation space after her ship was snatched 70,000 light years away to the unexplored Delta quadrant of the galaxy. She had to make the best of a patchwork crew, a long trip home under repeatedly hostile conditions and more Borg than any other captain ever had to face. At times, she was strict about regulations and other times…not so much. At times, she was quick to fight…or not. It depended on the situation. She’s been described as erratic and volatile, but she was hurled into a very stressful situation where questionable moral choices sometimes had to rule the day in order to see another day.. Overall, she did try to keep to the regulations even if her reasoning didn’t always seem sound. Her IFC count was low. Floundering attempts to shortcut to home were probably her biggest on-going embarrassment, but comparisons to Gilligan’s Island don’t make her a bad captain. It just makes it tough to keep watching.

Captain Jonathan Archer

(Bakula) was a scientist and an explorer. Being an optimist went along with this almost by default. Unfortunately, he found himself reaching out to an interstellar community that looked at a smile and saw bared teeth. He had to meet his challenges with the lowest level of technology of our assemblage. He gets a pass in some areas because rather than being a rule breaker, a lot of the things he did motivated the creation of rules in his wake. That’s the mark of a pioneer. Boy Scout that he was, he held himself to a high standard on gunplay, general violence and IFC activity. Sadly, like Janeway, he found himself faced with tough moral choices in uncharted territory. To really put the pressure on, the pioneering Archer was often fighting for the literal survival of Earth and the entire Alpha quadrant of the galaxy against villains unlike any ever before faced. No wonder they named schools after this guy.

Where does that leave us? Still a tough call. They’ve all done good work, but I find the greatest amount of material that I can not bring myself to watch involves Picard and Janeway. That doesn’t really speak to their captaining abilities, though. All that said, when I think of Star Trek, it’s Kirk and the Enterprise that come to mind. Not only will I put his Kobayashi Maru results up against anyone else’s, he’d be my first choice for deploying into action the next time some crisis comes Earth’s way.

After Superman, of course.

—

Phoenix was born in Peekskill, New York to hard-working parents.  He has also lived in Terre Haute, Indiana, Evansville, Indiana and has lived in Nashville, Tennessee since 1992.
A graduate of Indiana State University, Phoenix went on to work jobs in different fields over the years, occasionally even in writing.  He has also managed to meet strange and interesting people, broaden his knowledge of martial arts and travel to different lands.  Much to his mother’s chagrin, he also engaged in motorcycle riding, skydiving, mountain climbing, bounty hunting, prisoner extraditions, firedancing and sword fighting.
Equipped with a deep love of Chocolate, physical activity and learning, Phoenix continues to find great joy in life.  Despite many other activities that have demanded priority, he has never lost his love of writing and eagerness to focus on telling the stories he has been waiting for years to share.

Visit his Phoenix Writing blog at http://bit.ly/otTvOS

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