Luka and Danna

Luka and Danna, a scene from Dead and Gone,

a work again in progress

Luka touched the blade against his beautiful Danna’s throat and held his breath.

Born outside convention, his mother gave him as much as she could. She gave him the Gathering and Galen, the physician, the teacher. Not his father. She’d not given him any father at all. But Galen delivered him and eased his mother through her last agonies and out of this world.

Danna would not be put through that pain. He would see to that. Nor would he let her suffer her father’s bigotry.

Dr. Porter was insane. What kind of man would kill his own grandchild? No matter how “normal” it might be. There was no reason to believe that this baby would be “less than” in any way. It might tend back toward the norm, yes. But not necessarily anything less than Level I.

Luka measured Level I both mentally and physically. His IQ in the high 130s. He stood a little shorter than the norm for the Martian Colonies, but on a par with Earth-born. Danna was off the charts. She was the product of her father’s research, his amalgamation of the best available genetic material. The result of her father’s ambition. And now she had defied the man.

Luka loved her and she was carrying his child – Luka's child, not the great Dr. Porter’s engineered child.

Kneeling on the bank of a rushing creek, her head bowed, Danna held her dark hair back with her right hand and waited. She had wiped her car’s memory and destroyed her mobile.

Across the creek a green swath of grass defied the late snow. Both held in early morning shadow. The sun glowed against the top of the cliff face rising high above them.

Luka let go his breath. A thin red line followed the blade. The blade so sharp that she felt nothing. He applied pressure to the small cut just below her left ear. A chip, smaller than a grain of rice popped out into his hand. This was the last link between Danna and her father.

Character Introduction -- Novel Excerpt

My novel-in-progress Dead and Gone is a follow-up to Murder on Ceres, a science fiction/murder mystery. Joe is native to Ceres Colony, temporarily assigned to Earth, what is to him an alien planet.

Chapter 1

Joe passed the flashball to Joey. The little boy blocked it with his chest, let it drop to the ground, then dribbled past him. The kid was a natural, Joe hardly had to ease his defense at all. Not that he had a problem letting his boy do well against him. His own father had always played easy with him. His Dad didn’t believe a father should compete to win against his son. Brothers, yes. A rival team, of course. But competition with a kid whether on the pitch or in cyberspace was to train the child, not to beat him.

Bright light tugged at Joe’s eyelids. The flashball pitch and his son disappeared. He clenched his teeth against the cold. What was that smell? Smoke. He hadn’t heard the alarm. What the frak? Sounds, yes. But no alarm. Twittering sounds and rushing water. No emergency responders. The smoke sensors must have failed.

Something snuffled at him.

Dream or reality? Fire on the colony was never a good thing. Toxic fumes. He’d suffocate before he burned. He had to wake up. Had to get out. He tried to yell, but only groaned.

“Stay still,” someone said.

He struggled awake. A shadow blocked the sunlight. What he saw made no sense. A head, an enormous hairy head hung above him, silhouetted against the sun. He couldn’t see details. At least no details he recognized. No eyes. He saw nostrils half as big as his hand.

The sun? Where was he?

“Be quiet,” the voice said. “Just take it easy. She’ll move away. She’s just curious.”

Earth. He was on Earth and this was no frakking dream. He was trapped, wrapped in some kind of fabric, lying on the ground. Unprotected. Unable to move. With an animal standing over him.

The animal raised its head, enough so he could see more than its muzzle. It shook its head, slinging snot and saliva. Loose lips flapping like a banner in the Earth wind. Then it walked away. Ears twitching forward and back, its huge body swaying on stilt-like legs ending in hooves. Surprisingly delicate hooves considering the size of the animal.

“Moose,” Sheriff Macy said.

Joe watched the animal disappear into the pines. Or maybe they were fir trees. He didn’t know and he didn’t care. That animal was too big and too damn close.

Sheriff Macy poured a cup of coffee. “Don’t see many moose on Ceres Colony do you Hudson?”

“You’re damn frakkin’ right about that. Don’t want to see any more of them that close here either.” He wiped his face, climbed out of the sleeping bag, and accepted the coffee.

A New Character in Dead and Gone

image from youarestrong.com

During the 2015 A to Z Blogging Challenge I discovered a new character that I really liked. She was a present-day, tough-as-nails, gun-toting mama. ( See Briers and Brambles) She now has a name and some military restraint and is living in the future. She probably still carries. But it's likely a hand-held rail gun. Here she is introduced at the end of Chapter 1 with the start of building her character as she interacts with the main characters in Dead and Gone, a work in progress.

A tall, handsome woman with short brown hair entered the Command Unit. Whitaker called her over. “This is Sergeant M.D. Eisenhauer, our Interagency Liaison Officer. Ike, meet Detective Sergeant Hudson and Detective Sirocco.” He nodded toward Joe and Rafe. “They’re from Ceres Colony, out past Mars.” He turned to Macy. ““I’ve got some calls to make. Media’s breathing down my neck. If you’ll come with me.” Whitaker led the way out of the Command Unit. “Ike and Mac will get them started.”

Chapter 2

“I’m Joe.” He extended his hand to the woman. “Ike?”

She shook hands. “Like the President in olden times.”

“President?” he asked.

“You know, President Eisenhower? United States? Mid-twentieth Century? Mine’s spelled different.” She put her hands behind her and stood, feet shoulder width apart, military at ease. Her alto voice carried a hint of the local nasal quality.  “His was w-e-r. Mine’s the old fashioned German way, a-u.”

Joe smiled. None of this made any sense to him. The woman was talking some kind of ancient history. “Rafe here’s married to a History Prof.”

Rafe stepped forward. “As a matter of fact, she’s finishing up some research into Twentieth Century Earth right now. She’s in Mumbai, but she’ll be back tomorrow.”

Joe shook his head and grinned. A Manny Turrentine aficionado and an ancient history buff. Some cops have all the luck. “Okay, Ike. What are we working with?”

“One of our street officers took the initial information following a telephone complaint. The girl’s name is Danna.” She touched the photo in the center of the tracking wall and the pleasant looking young woman with shoulder length, dark hair and brown eyes turned from left to right and laughed. “She’s 178 cm, a little taller than average. Seventy-seven kilos,” Ike continued.

“The parents?” Joe asked.

“Daniel and Marlene Porter. Married.” She brought photos of them forward. “None of us know them, which should be an advantage. No preconceived views. We need to check out the girl friend, too. Where the girl was supposed to stay.”

“You got addresses or finding directions?”

“McAlister here is our Information Tech. She has everything we need.” Ike indicated the woman at the computer.

“Just call me Mac,” the IT said and proceeded to collect their contact information then forward what she had on the Porters and Isabella Turtle to their mobiles. “Daniel Porter is a big deal geneticist. He doesn’t do designer genetics. Not for the usual traits anyway – hair color, height, left-handedness. You know.”

Left-handedness? Joe was pretty sure he didn’t know.

“Anyway, he’s into intelligence.”

“As in information acquisition?” Rafe asked.

“Does he always talk like that?” Mac asked.

Joe laughed and clapped Rafe on the shoulder. “He sure does. And I bet with that red hair and mustache, you thought the scholar here was just another pretty face.”

Rafe arched an eyebrow. “Joe, is a jealous man.”

Eisenhauer crossed her arms and looked from one to the other, but said nothing. 

Character Building -- An Essay

While I went about my daily business after posting yesterday’s “Briers and Brambles,” I couldn’t get the character out of my mind.

I often write flash fiction to practice some aspect of writing – world building, dialog, scene setting. Rather like an artist does studies of hands or ears or faces.

Yesterday was an exercise in tension building. At least that was the intent. As it turns out, there was the beginning of a character in that piece. A character that I think I’m going to like. At first I thought she’d make a great protagonist for a detective novel. Maybe a whole series of novels. Do I sound like a writer or what?

She was alive in today’s world. But I don’t write in today’s world. I write sci-fi/murder mysteries. I built my world in Murder on Ceres. It’s fully populated with characters I find interesting and satisfying. Dead and Gone is my next novel, currently a work in progress, as they say. It has the same characters in the same world. I didn’t need another character. There’s a new antagonist, but considering what happened to the antagonist in Murder on Ceres, that’s to be expected. 

So I put this woman out of mind. After all, I had important real world activities to perform – dishes to wash, appointments to schedule, an expired auto license plate to renew.

But she wouldn’t go away. So I'm giving her a chance to adjust to my world. She’ll have to move to the Denver Region and to the future where civilization is centered in shiny metal cylinders orbiting Mars. Can she give up her attachment to the Colt 45 Automatic, Model 1911? She’s just old fashioned. But is she too old fashioned?

Any new character sends me back to the basics I learned from William Bernhardt. He writes thrillers and other things. Most importantly for me, he teaches and he’s written The Red Sneaker Writers Book Series. And more particularly, Creating Character: Bringing Your Story to Life. (Available from Amazon. Click here.)

Its Appendix A: Character Detail Sheet is a revelatory exercise. I’ve learned that my new character was born on Earth; her name is Madeleine Denise – a name she hates; she’s generally brown like most people on Earth at this time; she doesn’t suffer fools; and she’s a damn good cop.

Look out Joe and Rafe and Terren. There’s a new character on the block.