Monthly Archives: November 2015

Brechalon Characters: Senta’s Family

Posted on by
Reply

Brechalon (New Cover)Spoiler Alert

Senta’s immediate family appears in Book 0: Brechalon and Book 1: The Voyage of the Minotaur. Some of them make appearances later in the series, including the upcoming Book 7: The Price of Magic.

Granny (Admeta Mae Goose): I didn’t use Granny’s name until book 5. I just liked that her name was Granny Goose. Granny loves kids and has cobbled together a family of her own grandchildren and the children of a couple of neices and nephews. All the kids in the household are related, but not necessarily siblings.

Bertice Haver is the oldest and is already working in Brechalon.

Geert McCoort is closest in age to Senta, and has to go to work in Book 0. His last name is a nod to author Frank McCourt, though I changed the spelling. His older brother is Maro McCoort.

Didrika Goose is a toddler who joins the family in Book 0 when her parents die. Her baby sister is Ernst Goose, and is still in a crib in Book 1.  By book 7, these girls are almost grown women.

Writing/Reading Update

Posted on by
Reply

Tesla's StepdaughtersWow, between working, taking a three day business trip out of state, and physical therapy on my leg, I have had precious little time to write.  I’ve been way behind on my quota for over two weeks now.  I’ve got to get it together.

On my trip to California though, I did get some reading done on the plane and at the airport.  Did you know they have free airport wifi and usb charging stations now?  I don’t travel enough by air to have learned these things, I guess.

In any case, I started reading Tesla’s Stepdaughter’s again.  People always look at me funny when I tell them I’m reading my own book, but I did write it for myself.  I haven’t read this one for a while, and it’s pretty good, I think.  I’m not the only one that thinks so either.  This book sells better than any of my books, with the exception of the robot series.  It usually sells 1.5 to 2 times as many copies each month as Astrid Maxxim and about 4 times as many copies as any single Senta book.

Might I write a sequel?  I actually started on one once.  Now though, I get the feeling that it might spoil what I’ve already written.  I don’t know.  Hopefully I’ve got quite a few years left in which to decide.

 

Brechalon Characters: Iolanthe Dechantagne

Posted on by
Reply

Brechalon (New Cover)Spoiler Alert
Iolanthe Dechantagne (pronounced Yo-lon-thee Day-shan-tane) is one of my favorite characters in the series. She is a strong woman and can be a real bitch. I hinted, when I wrote the series, that there was something in her past that drove her to be what she was, and in Brechalon, we see in flashback what that was. This is also something that is resolved in Book 5: The Two Dragons. Iolanthe really is the main character in Book 0: Brechalon and Book 1: The Voyage of the Minotaur. She drives the action and events, and in book 1, we see the beginnings of her growth as a person. This continues in Book 2: The Dark and Forbidding Land. She can be ruthless and mean, and at least in Book 0, cares nothing for anyone except her older brother Terrence.

By book 3: The Drache Girl, Iolanthe has kind of moved to the back of the plot.  The great moments that define her life are completed by this time.  She still remains a fun character though, and even in book 7: The Price of Magic, she continues to be a driver of story events.

Brechalon Characters: Senta

Posted on by
Reply

Brechalon (New Cover)Spoiler Alert
In Brechalon, Senta is only seven years old. Had she not been the title character of the series, I would have left her out, since the story takes place before she does anything of importance. I’m glad that I put her in, because it gives me a chance to show a little of her world. Senta lives with her Granny and five of her cousins in a tenenment apartment. We see that even though she had no magical capabilities, she does have an affinity for magic and can sense it even at a distance.

Senta is described as an orphan in all the other books, but in Brechalon we get the hint that she may not be one in actuality. It is possible that her parents simply abandoned her. We find out the ultimate truth of this in Book 5: The Two Dragons.

Brechalon Characters: Meta Characters

Posted on by
Reply

Brechalon (New Cover)Spoiler Alert

There are quite a few characters who do not appear in the story of Senta and the Steel Dragon, but are only referenced. Here are four big ones:

Magnus the Great: Magnus was king of the Zur two thousand years before the events in the story. He was a conqueror who carried on his father’s conquest of the continent of Sumir, more or less unifying the culture of mankind. He occupies a place in history much like our own Julius Caesar or Alexander the Great. At the end of his reign, his empire fell apart, partially due to the antics of his daughter Zurfina, though no one has described the exact details. Zurfina the sorceress is the namesake of Magnus’s daughter.

Kafira Kristos: Probably the most important minor character in the book is Kafira Kristos. She occupies the place in the world of Senta and the Steel Dragon that Jesus Christ does in ours. Her life and martydom just after the time of Magnus the Great creates the divide between the two religions in the story–Kafirites and Zaeri.

The idea for Kafira came from a theological paper I once read. It wondered, assuming that life existed on countless planets of the universe, would Jesus have lived and died on each one of them, or would they have had their own savior. I decided that for the story, this world similar but not quite our own, would have its own, and further decided that she would be female.

Kafira is also the basis for a great deal of blasphemous cussing in the story. Kafira! Kafira Kristos! Kafira’s Cross! Kafira’s Tits! Kafira in a Hand Basket! and worst of all, Kafira’s Bloody Twat!

Kazia Garstone: There are many books and writers referenced in the story, because several characters are either writers, devoted readers, or book collectors. I have a whole list of authors and their works, some of whom I never used. Kazia Garstone is referenced more than any of them. She was a muck-raker as well as an author and is considered quite scandelous in polite society. Many consider her a socialist, but her books are widely read and early editions are very valuable.

Voindrazius: Voindrazius is mentioned once in the early part of Brechalon, book 0.  Then I don’t think he’s mentioned again until he appears… in the upcoming book 7– The Price of Magic.  I’m not going to say anything more about him now.  You’ll have to read it in these two books.

Brechalon Characters: Terrence Dechantagne

Posted on by
Reply

Brechalon (New Cover)Spoiler Alert
I think all my character discussions for Senta and the Steel Dragon will have to carry a spoiler alert. So much happens to all of them over the course of the series that, though I try not to, I might inadvertantly spill some secrets about one or two of them. So, read this at your own risk.

Brechalon is a prequel. I wrote it long after I had written books 1, 3, and 5, so it provides a look at some of the events of the past that are only hinted at in the other books. I don’t know whether to recommend that you read it first or last.

Terrence Dechantagne is one of the major characters of the series. As he appears in Brechalon, he is in the army, serving in the cavalry. During the course of the story, he takes a furlough to spend time at home. Terrence is a drug addict, addicted to the “See Spice,” white opthalium, a magical drug that transports him to a world where his troubles are all soothed away. The ultimate cause of this addiction is his eyewitnessing the murder of his mother by his father when he was twelve. Add to this, the generally unpleasant life that he has led since.

Terrence is a thoughtful man, a collector of rare books, but has been thrust into the position of a man of action and violence by the expectations of others. His general self-loathing extends to anyone who cares about him. In book 0, he is at his low point, spending most of his time under the influence.

His Robot Girlfriend – Politics

Posted on by
Reply

His Robot Girlfriend is Free on iBooksPeople accuse me of having all kinds of hidden agendas in the robot books, both political and otherwise. Some have suggested that I’m a radical environmentalist because of the prominance of the Green Party in the story, and the inevitability of global warming. I do care about the environment, but the reason that the Green Party plays a part is that I thought it would be more fun to have three parties vying for the presidency than two.

Others have said the story is a thinly veiled treatis on same-sex marriage. There is a reference to the fact that same-sex marriage is more common in the future of the story. That is not an endorsement by me. I don’t have really strong feelings about it one way or the other. I do think the institution of marriage is being damaged less by same sex couples than by people (either gay or straight) who practice serial monogamy– getting married and divorced over and over again. I’ve been married to the same woman for 30 years.

One area that few people get is the parallel of Apple Computers. I tried to parody and reference Apple in a number of ways. I find Apple and Apple fandom both interesting and humorous. On the other hand, though I wasn’t part of it when I wrote the first book, I wouldn’t give up either my iPad, my iMacs or my iPhone 6 for anything now.

Characters: Harriet Smith

Posted on by
Reply

His Robot WifeHarriet Smith is a character in His Robot Girlfriend and His Robot Wife. She is the daughter of the main character– Mike Smith. Harriet is very loosely based on my own daughter, but as my daughter has happily pointed out, she would never put up with such a jerk of a husband as Harriet has, and quite honestly, unlike Mike, if my daughter did, I’d put him in the ground myself.

There are a few little inside stories that are taken from my own life with my daughter, such as her ability to talk a subject to death until my eyes glaze over, and the remembrance that they have of the time that Mike threatened to kill a kid who was bullying Harriet and almost lost his job because of it.

On the other hand, Harriet is a dental hygienist, and is fascinated with teeth, something my daughter has never shown any interest in.  I really want to expand Harriet’s role in a future book.

Characters: Lucas Smith

Posted on by
Reply

His Robot Girlfriend is Free on iBooksLucas Smith is a character in His Robot Girlfriend. He is the son of Mike Smith and his deceased wife. While I was writing His Robot Girlfriend, my son was participating in Jr. ROTC at his high school. Because of this, I made Lucas a soldier. Other than that, he bares no real resemblance to my son at all. In fact, Lucas has a relatively small part to play in the story, so his character isn’t really all that fleshed out. He doesn’t appear in His Robot Wife at all.  On the other hand, I have a big part planned for him in a future robot book.

Characters: Patience

Posted on by
2

Patience is the Robot in “His Robot Girlfriend”. Just as you might expect, she’s perfect.  What I find interesting is that so many people tell me they love Patience– both male and femal readers.  I guess she’s so pleasant that she’s just hard not to like.

Though her hair was covered with a clear plastic cap, he could see it was jet black. It matched two dark, carefully arched eyebrows and a set of long eyelashes.  She had no other body hair.  Her face could best be described as cute, with large blue eyes, a button nose, and thick voluptuous lips.  She had the kind of slender and yet curvy body that was just not possible on a real woman.   Breasts the size of apples just kind of floated there above a perfectly flat stomach.  Mike tilted his head down.  She looked anatomically complete.

Of all my characters, none went through as much of a change between first draft and published work as did Patience Smith in His Robot Girlfriend. Originally she was a rather Amazonian figure, physically very imposing, but much more submissive. Some might argue that Patience is still submissive, but I think we find out in His Robot Wife that she really isn’t. When I rewrote a series of short pieces into a long story, she needed to have much more force of personality so that she could advance the storyline of forcing Mike to change. A college professor once told me the main character is the one in the story who changes the most– and that would be Mike.

When I started rewriting, I just wasn’t happy with her physical description, so I started completely from scratch, using some of the actresses that fit that body type: Christina Ricci, Natalie Portman, Alyson Hannigan, as well as a young woman I knew as a model– so yes, there really is a Patience out there. I observed her as carefully as possible (without seeming too creepy) so that I could describe her movements and gestures– like when Patience bounces on her tip-toes or incorporates dance moves into everyday movement. Since then, I’ve tried to find a human being to at least think about when I write most of my characters.

Her personality couldn’t be based on a real person or even a person that I though up.  She’s a robot.  Her personality couldn’t be readily apparent.  It had to be very subdued.  It had to sneak up on the reader as it sneaks up on Mike.  For that reason I think, quite a few readers find her a dull automoton– Imagine finding a robot as such.  I think this is a failure for me as a writer.  Still of all the fan letters I’ve ever gotten, I would say that easily 40% (written about any of the books) tell me how much they love Patience.

I mentioned before that the robot books are not my favorite Wesley Allison books.  That being said, they are my most popular, so I will soon write another.  Oddly, I have the hardest time thinking up plots for Mike and Patience, when plots just seem to pop up for my other books. The next book is planned to be a longer one, involving multiple characters from the previous books.  Hopefully, that will work out well.