Tag Archives: Patience is a Virtue

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.

My Favorite Bits: Mansfield Perk

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In His Robot Girlfriend and the upcoming His Robot Wife: Patience is a Virtue, the local coffee establishment is based on the world of Jane Austen and is called Central Perk.  I admit that when I thought it up, I thought it was far more clever than it probably is.

A friend once asked me why Starbuck’s was named after a character from Moby Dick.  Did Starbuck drink a lot of coffee?  I used that conversation in His Robot Wife.  I also used an experience I myself had at Starbucks, when the barrista asked if she could “try something” and made me a bizarre frappuccino concoction.  In the story, she makes ice tea.  This came from a British cooking show I once watched where the chef made “American Ice Tea” which bore no resemblence to anything I’ve ever seen an American drink.  It was mostly orange juice with about 5 lbs. of mint stuck in it.

There are probably more of my own experiences in the Robot series than any of my other books.  This is because Mike, the main character is more like me than any other character.  There are characters I wish I was more like, but I’m not.

 

Newest Version of His Robot Wife Now Available.

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As I write this, the newest updated version of His Robot Wife is now up at Smashwords and Amazon.  By the time you read this, it should be available for download at all ebook retailers.  On the information page, it says Revision 8-8-12.

On a related note, I am cruising right through the draft of Patience is a Virtue, but I’ve been adding a lot to the original outline– so much that I had to go back and create a new outline.  The result is that this book will probably be much longer than either of the two previous books.  His Robot Girlfriend was 39,000 words, His Robot Wife was 28,000.  Originally I planned the new book to be close to His Robot Girlfriend, but now the outline calls for 64,000 words.  Of course, as I mentioned, usually my drafts get shortened during revision.  But now you know part of what is taking so long.

My Favorite Bits: The texTee and other Technologies

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When I wrote His Robot Girlfriend in 2008, there was no iPad yet.  There was a Sony Reader and an Amazon Kindle, and I imagined them replacing books, so I gave Mike a texTee.  I don’t know how I came up with the name.  Then the iPad came out and made me look kind of lame.  So when I wrote His Robot Wife, I updated the texTee and made it more advanced than an iPad, with a voice activated interface.  Along comes Siri, and I’m outdated again!

One thing they don’t have in my robot stories is a computer.  One of my ideas was that computers just don’t exist anymore as standalone items.  They have computers in everything.  People use texTees (Tablets), wriTees (word processor and more), and vueTees (televisions).  The vueTees have (according to the story): interactivity, inscope (don’t know what that would be), Infinet connections, and threed (probably something like 3D).  They also use t-pods (advanced ipods maybe) and something called an andTee.

I just added the andTee so there would be something that nobody knows about today that they have in the future.  I remember reading the cross-time novels by Harry Turtledove.  In those books, the people of the future have video games and music and something called a fasarta which is never explained.  Maybe the andTee and the fasarta are the same thing.

As I write this, I’m finishing up chapter four of Patience is a Virtue.  I’ve really got a groove going now, but what I’ve written is a lot more than is in my draft.  My books usually get shorter in revision, but this might well be the longest of the three books so far (not too surprising since the others are so short).  Keep an eye out here on your computer or your texTee for more updates.  Thanks.