Patience is a Virtue: Wanda

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His Robot Wife: Patience is a Virtue

Wanda is the most important new character in Patience is a Virtue.  Like Patience, she is a robot– a Daffodil Amonte 2.  She is a bit on the short side and very curvy, with lots of wavy red hair.  She belongs to Ryan and was built to his specifications.

Wanda is far more robot-like than Patience and the latter becomes her mentor, teaching her how to be more human-like.  Wanda is shocked and frightened by Patience’s general disregard for the laws of robotics.

Having someone to tutor in the ways of the world has given me a chance to play with an entirely new side of Patience and it’s turning out to be a lot of fun.

Patience is a Virtue: Ryan

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His Robot Wife: Patience is a Virtue

Ryan is a new character in this book.  He becomes an unlikely companion to Mike– unlikely because the two of them are really nothing alike.  Ryan is, or rather was, an outgoing boisterous fellow, and is a car salesman.  Recently his life has been turned upside down with the discovery that his wife was cheating on him and his subsequent divorce.

I was thinking about my stories the other day, and realized that I had numerous stories going on that all had cheating wives in them.  I don’t know why that’s on my mind, as my wife is as faithful as a Barsoomian calot.  I suppose it’s something that just tends to be on a man’s mind at a certain time in his life– a sort of evolutionary imperative, if you will.  But I have a cheating wife here, one in 82 Eridani, and one in Kanana the Jungle Girl (currently in limbo).  At least two of them will see the light of publication this year.

Patience is a Virtue: Harriet

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His Robot Wife: Patience is a Virtue

Mike’s daughter Harriet has a much larger role in this story than she did in the previous two.  She was really just a background character in the first two books, so I’m enjoying fleshing her out now.  She’s become a real girlfriend for Patience, as well as a mom in her own right now.

Originally Mike had two kids, a daughter and a son, because I had two kids, a daughter and a son.  And while initially I did pattern a few traits after my own daughter, Harriet really bears little resemblance to her now.  Despite that, my daughter still refers to Harriet as “her character.”  I think this has less to do with the two of them being alike, and much more with the fact that I am very much like Mike.

When I first wrote His Robot Girlfriend, my idea was that there had been a resurgence in old-fashioned names, so Mike’s kids and the kids in his classroom would reflect that.  Later I made a few changes and additions, some of which didn’t hold with that idea.  Specifically, I changed the name of Mike’s son for some reason to Lucas, and I added a couple of other characters.

 

Patience is a Virtue: Mike

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His Robot Wife: Patience is a Virtue

Mike Smith is the main character in His Robot Wife and His Robot Girlfriend.  He is Patience’s husband.  Of course he is in Patience is a Virtue.  It wouldn’t be a story without him.  I think much of the charm of the story is in Mike’s relationship with Patience.  Of course most if not all of Patience’s motivations in the first two stories was her devotion to Mike.

In this book, Mike is less central to the story, because it belongs much more to the robot.  Of course he is still there just as much as before and most of the best dialog at least in my opinion, belongs to him.

Mike goes through some medical problems in this book that mirror my own– specifically he tears the cartilage out of his knee just as I did.  This only makes sense, since of all my characters, Mike is the  closest to me.

Patience is a Virtue: Patience

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His Robot Wife: Patience is a Virtue

As I mentioned yesterday, the new story is told much more from Patience’s point of view.  Patience is a Daffodil Amonte model robot and as such, can do quite a few things that human beings cannot.  Telling the story from her point of view gives me the chance to show what’s going on inside of her a bit.  For instance, she can carry on a phone conversation completely in her head, without verbally having to speak the words.  So, she can carry on a conversation with a person in front of her at the same time that she carries on a conversation with someone on the phone, and theoretically could be doing web searches and other actives while doing so.  In this story, Patience gets a little threatening– not physically, but she can after all, mess with your bank accounts, credit rating, and public records, all the while talking to you.  We also get to see a little more of why she does what she does.  For instance, she lets Mike get hurt if she thinks that saving him all the time would damage his self image.  And she bases her decision on which store to patronize based on whether the clerks are Daffodils or Gizmo robots.

Update: Patience is a Virtue

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His Robot Wife: Patience is a Virtue

I’ve been working on Patience is a Virtue today and am just finishing up chapter six.  This book is plotted out to be 20 chapters, so I’m a little over 1/4 of the way through the draft.  As I’ve noted before, this will make it the longest Robot book in the series, and just from my own perspective, I think it’s the best one so far.

I jump back into it yesterday, making yesterday only the second day since the beginning of the year that I’ve met my New Year’s resolution writing goal.

As I’ve noted before, this book is much more from Patience’s point of view than the previous books.  I hope this makes it fresher.  It certainly makes it fun to write, as Patience, while not your typical robot, nevertheless does view humanity as a somewhat mechanical outsider.  Over the next few days, I’ll share some of what I’ve got cooking in the book so far.

82 Eridani: Behind the Scenes

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Scan

This is my sketch for the starship in 82 Eridani.  It is described in the story as looking like a 16 penny nail flying through space head-first.

You can see some of my notes and adjustments made on the fly.  You might also note that this is drawn on the back of a 7th grade History worksheet.  A lot of those have been used as scratch paper for story details over the years.

On Being Behind

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I started off the year with a New Year’s resolution to write 8 pages a day.  It’s now February and I am 128 pages behind!  Even today, when I felt like I got some good writing in, I’m only on page four.  There you go.  Now at least I’m back into a groove.  Feeling a little better certainly helps.

I’ve been experiencing something unusual for me.  I’ve run out of names for characters.  I usually keep a list of good character names, but I’ve used them all for 82 Eridani.  Some stories don’t require much in the way of names.  I use baby name web sites.  But this story just calls out for some interesting names.  I’m going to have to pour through my mythology books.

Spam

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One interesting thing I noticed when I switched from Blogspot to WordPress is the amount of spam comments posted.  I usually see four or five a week, and dutifully clean them off.  Today, I looked and there were 74.  I don’t remember how long it’s been since I last checked, what with my computer switch-over and all.

I don’t know what the point is of all the spam.  I assume it’s to lure people to some disreputable sites and infect their systems with spyware, but having never followed one of those links, I don’t know for certain.  In any case, nobody should be searching around the web without some good anti-malware protection.  I’ve used Norton and McAfee in the past, but currently I’m using Kaspersky.  When I switched over to my iMac, one of the first things I did was to download the new version of Kaspersky Internet Security.  They say Macs are less a target than PCs, but I’m not taking any chances.

You shouldn’t either.  There are several good Internet Security programs available online for free or nearly free.  Google AVG or Avast, if you have nothing else already.  Stay safe!

Time Machine

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One of the coolest things about the iMac is Time Machine, built right in.  It’s just way cool.  I’ve got a new external hard drive that I’m designating as my time machine drive.

In the past, I have obsessively backed-stuff up all over the place.  Now I can take a bit of a breather.