13
Feb
2015

Portrait of a Character – Rebecca Shapiro

Portrait of a Character – Rebecca Shapiro

Rebecca Shapiro is more than just a fix for canon.

Origins

Because I had wanted to contradict canon and give Malcolm Reed a family and long-term descendants, Malcolm’s son, Declan, would need a wife or at least a girlfriend or even a baby mama.

Portrait of a Character – Rebecca Shapiro

Actress, Rachel Weisz (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Portrayal

Rebecca is played by actress Rachel Weisz. I wanted a Jewish actress for this role, as Rebecca is somewhat traditional and is Karin and Ethan‘s younger daughter. Furthermore, I wanted Declan’s decision to convert to her faith to be believable. I also like this actress; I think she’s smart, and her choices are interesting ones.

Personality

Caring and up for anything, Rebecca is the true companion that Declan has been waiting for his entire life. His first marriage was horrific, as he explains in Faith. Rebecca is the person who heals him. In gratitude, although she never asks him to, he embraces her faith and converts to Judaism.

Relationships

Declan Reed

Rebecca’s only relationship is with Declan, who is about twelve years her senior. They meet at her elder sister, Alia’s, Bat Mitzvah, which is a part of The Rite and referred to in Fortune. At that point, he is a young man; it’s before he marries his first wife, Louise Schiller.

So after the last death in the preceding generation (Norri), Declan goes to Europe, partly to return to Oxford, where he is an artist in residence. He takes a side trip to Giverny to look at and paint Monet’s water lilies. While there, he sees Rebecca and they become reacquainted.

Mirror Universe

So it’s impossible for Rebecca to exist in the Mirror Universe, as Ethan does not.

Quote

“There is a saying in Judaism, let’s see if I can get it right. It, um, it’s that when Moses brought down the law from Mount Sinai, all of the Jews were there. Even the dead. Even the unborn, even the completely unknown and unfathomable, like Vulcan converts, and Jews from the Mirror Universe, all stretching, in a chain, through all of time. And you know something? I saw you there.”

Upshot

I really liked the idea of redeeming Declan in the same way that Lili redeems Malcolm, albeit sooner. I particularly enjoyed creating yet another reason why our universe and the Mirror are different – with no Ethan Shapiro on the other side of the pond, there is no Rebecca and, as a result, their deep future descendants don’t exist, including Eleanor and Richard Daniels. Rebecca is the linchpin of all of that.

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Posted by jespah in Fan fiction, In Between Days series, Portrait, 3 comments
10
Feb
2015

Review – Achieving Peace

Review – Achieving Peace

With Achieving Peace, I had wanted to touch upon Laura Hayes‘s life, somewhat independent of Doug and Lili.

Background

Barking up the Muse Tree | Jespah | Janet Gershen-Siegel | In Between Days | Achieving Peace

In Between Days

Because Laura is an attorney, the idea would be that she had a connection to the signing of the peace treaty ending the Earth-Romulan War.

Plot

Hence it’s the end of the war, and Laura is an assistant to an Andorian, T’Therin. They are present at the signing and transmission of the peace treaty to the Romulans. With them are Chara Sika (sharp-eyed readers will recognize her as the mother of Xindi sloth Aranda Chara, who Travis meets during The Puzzle), Emily Stone (the mother of Mark Stone, Pamela‘s classmate), canon characters Vulcan Ambassador Soval and Gral, a Tellarite. A Xindi Reptilian is working communications, and he reports that the Romulans won’t allow a picture transmission. They will receive an image, but they won’t send one, and remain a faceless enemy to the end, which clicks into place rather nicely with canon.

Story Postings

Rating

The story is rated K.

Upshot

This is a small filler type of story, and it serves its purpose just fine. It was also a treat to bring these mostly minor characters together, as Laura is more than just the officiant at Malcolm and Lili’s wedding, or Jay‘s elder sister.  Because this story reminded me of her, Laura also got a mention in Everybody Knows this is Nowhere. I particularly liked giving one final bit of information, that the Romulans would be relieved at the cessation of hostilities, ended just in time before the Star Empire went bankrupt.

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Posted by jespah in Fan fiction, In Between Days series, Review, 2 comments
06
Feb
2015

Portrait of a Character – Derek Kelby

Portrait of a Character – Derek Kelby

Origins

The character, of course, is Star Trek Enterprise canon, but he didn’t have a first name.

Portrait of a Character – Derek Kelby

Derek Magyar as Kelby

I used the actor’s own first name, as he needed something.

Because he is a Commander in canon, but that’s the fourth season, I figured he could be at a lower level during the fourth season. As in canon, he works in Engineering.

Portrayal

As in canon, Kelby is played by actor Derek Magyar.

Personality

Something of a stick in the mud, Kelby is particularly stiff in his earlier years. In Where No Gerbil Has Gone Before, he, along with Meredith Porter, engages in the shenanigans with a lot more reluctance than the others exhibit. While I don’t overtly put them together, I do have Aidan MacKenzie suggest it.

However, he’s not totally without romance. In On the Radio, reference is made to him having spent the night with Patti Socorro during the events of More, More, More! However, even he can get into trouble. In Shell Shock, along with Malcolm, he’s one of the suspects in the rape of Ruby Brannagh. In Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, it’s confirmed that he never married in the first kick back in time. He also accidentally recorded the single men singing Santa Claus is Coming to Town, a recording heard as a transmission by the second iteration ship.

Relationships

Patti Socorro

With Chef Will Slocum dead in the second iteration, Patti and Derek marry. There is virtually nothing on their relationship, except that she was the third to last woman to wed, as opposed to second to last in the first iteration.

Mirror Universe

Portrait of a Character – Derek Kelby

Mirror Kelby

The character is known to exist in the Mirror Universe, although he’s an Ensign and not a Commander.

Quote

“Believe me, nobody wants to see Oslo this time of year, unless they like skiing.”

Upshot

Much like in canon, Derek isn’t seen much and isn’t heard from much. This stick in the mud character is not easy to write.

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Posted by jespah in Fan fiction, In Between Days series, Interphases series, Portrait, 1 comment
03
Feb
2015

Review – Everybody Knows This is Nowhere

Review – Everybody Knows This is Nowhere

Everybody Knows This is Nowhere works on a ton of levels. It is one of my best fan fiction works.

Background

I enjoyed writing the E2 Star Trek fan fiction stories a great deal, but I figured out after a while that it had to be two kick backs in time, rather than just one.

Barking up the Muse Tree | jespah | Janet Gershen-Siegel | Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere

Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere

Otherwise, some of the scenes that I really wanted to put into the storyline would have been impossible or nearly impossible, without smashing canon to smithereens. Everybody Knows This is Nowhere rather neatly fixes all that.

Plot

After an initial kick back in time, the descendants of the Enterprise meets the current ship but it’s actually a second iteration of three. The second iteration is kicked back, too, and the bulk of the book is about the second iteration’s trials in the Delphic Expanse.

Review – Everybody Knows This is Nowhere

I Only Want to Be with You (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

With certain things known, such as crew members’ sexualities and mate preferences, a lot of stress of the first three books essentially disappears. Therefore, almost everyone opts for an ‘instant replay’. But then some things go wrong, and not everyone can get what they want or who they want. In keeping with what I had established in Together, Lili ends up with José Torres.

Music

Story Postings

Rating

The story has an M rating.

Upshot

So this book is far sadder but also more spiritual. Lili has to heal from some horrible hurts, and she doesn’t treat José too well at all in the beginning. Hence I suppose that having her behave somewhat rottenly at times really pulls her out of the Mary Sue category for good. The story, I feel, hits its marks well, and ultimately soars.


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Posted by jespah in Fan fiction, Interphases series, Review, 12 comments
30
Jan
2015

Progress Report – January 2015

Progress Report – January 2015

January 2015 was busy.

Posted Works

It was a good month for tying up some small loose ends online.

First of all, I added The Reptile Speaks, Insecurity, Losin’ It, Transported, Truth, Where No Gerbil Has Gone Before and That’s Not My Name to the G & T Show forums.

On Wattpad, I added In Between Days as an anthology, adding Apple, Local Flavor, A Kind of Blue, Brown, Gainful, The Tribe, and Friday Visit to it. Plus I started spinning out Intolerance.

I posted Supply and Demand, Quartermaster, Worry, Promise, and Marbles to Fanfiction.net. I started posting Everybody Knows This is Nowhere.

Also, I imported the following completed stories to Fictionpad: Supply and Demand, Quartermaster,  Worry, Marbles, and The Three of Us.

On Ad Astra, in response to a prompt about crack ship pairings, I posted a new Times of the HG Wells story, Makeover.

Barking up the Muse Tree | Janet Gershen-Siegel | jespah | Quill | January 2015

Milestones

Over eighty stories have at least ten reviews and 1,000 reads.  And of those, twenty have twenty or more reviews and 5,000 or more reads.  Of those, five have fifty or more reviews and 10,000 or more reads.  And of those, two have one hundred or more combined reviews and over 20,000 reads, Reversal and Revved Up, which accomplishes this feat with only one posting.

See the Stats page for individual read and review counts.

WIP Corner

I worked on The Badge of Humanity, the third and final book in the Obolonk trilogy. Also, I spent time on the earlier two books, including working with beta readers.

Prep Work

I worked on my Amazon author pages and my Facebook author page, and I continued requesting reviews for Untrustworthy. Plus I even sent out some signed copies!

This Month’s Productivity Killers

Being published! Seriously – as paradoxical as it may sound, you get emotional and busy, and so it’s more difficult to concentrate on being productive. Plus I spent a lot of time concentrating on wholly original work; Star Trek fan fiction was often set aside in favor of that. I was also, in the final third of the month, again immersed in school at Quinnipiac.

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Posted by jespah in Fan fiction, Review, 1 comment
27
Jan
2015

Review – The Three of Us

Review – The Three of Us

The Three of Us is one of my best fan fiction efforts.

Background

As the third piece of the E2 series, I wanted to pursue a Star Trek fan fiction story that I had had in mind for quite a while.

Barking up the Muse Tree | jespah | Janet Gershen-Siegel | The Three of Us

The Three of Us

This was an idea about a love triangle/threesome among Lili, Jay, and Malcolm. Of all four stories set during that time period, this one was the most fully realized, and the easiest to write. I had tons of it in my head even before pen went to paper (and then I transcribed it to pixels). I wish all storytelling was like this!

Plot

Barking up the Muse Tree | jespah | Janet Gershen-Siegel | The Sparrow and the Blue Jay

The Sparrow and the Blue Jay

The story begins with Malcolm providing a little news and ship’s gossip to the still-injured Ethan Shapiro.

Malcolm speaks a little about the remaining single women on board the Enterprise, but he mainly discusses an upcoming baseball game between the MACOs and Starfleet. The action shifts as Lili tries out for the Starfleet team and then Shelby and Andrew talk about why she won’t be playing. The first chapter ends with Judy Kelly Rostov going into labor, the mark of the second child to be born on the generational ship (Valleri Rostov, so-named because Davy Jones of the Monkees had recently died when I was writing that part of the story).

As the book continues, more and more of the single women are snapped up, until only two are left ….

Music

Story Postings

Rating

The story has an M rating.

Upshot

As stated above, I had a lot of this storyline in my head as I was writing and even beforehand. From the weddings to the aliens to the spirituality to the triumphs and tragedies, the love and the nastiness, this is one of my absolute favorites of my works.

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Posted by jespah in Fan fiction, Interphases series, Review, 8 comments
23
Jan
2015

Portrait of a Character – Ines Ramirez

Portrait of a Character – Ines Ramirez

Origins

I wanted one of the Beckett-O’Day-Madden–Digiorno-Reed children to have a Calafan-style set of dual day/night relationships, much like Lili, Doug, and Malcolm. I decided that Neil would be the one to be in such a situation.

Portrayal

I see America Ferrera in this role.

Portrait of a Character – Ines Ramirez

America Ferrera as Ines Ramirez

It was very important to me that Ines be “played” by an actress with Hispanic ethnicity.

She doesn’t really have science fiction credits, but she does have fantasy credits. It would not surprise me if she was eventually tapped for a superhero film or a movie based on a comic book series or the like. She seems to be a versatile and  likable actress.

Personality

Smart and friendly, the daughter of Jenny and Francisco is practical and bighearted. Her home is your home.

Relationships

Neil Digiorno-Madden

Although they never marry, Ines’s heart belongs to Neil, and they have two children, Jenny Lee (Jennifer Leonora) and Martin Kevin, who is named for Kevin Madden-Beckett and is also one of the eventual ancestors to canon character Martin Madden (who I name Martin Douglas Madden). Ines is also the second of Neil’s loves; he meets Yinora before he meets her.

Mirror Universe

Ines cannot exist in the Mirror, as Jennifer does not end up with Francisco. The Mirror Jennifer instead ends up with the Calafan, Treve, and never has a child.

Quote

“Let’s get down to it. I can’t just hang around and complain. I feel like we need to get things settled. But nothing without Norri’s okay. I mean, right?”

Upshot

Ines could use some more screen time, as she is a pleasant and easy to write character. Plus she more or less comes as a package deal with Neil, who is a fun character, too. She will be back.

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Posted by jespah in Fan fiction, In Between Days series, Portrait, 1 comment
20
Jan
2015

Review – Entanglements

A Look at Entanglements

Entanglements was not originally a work I had planned.

Background

Barking Up the Muse Tree | jespah | Janet Gershen-Siegel | Entanglements

Entanglements

The idea was to go straight from Reflections Down a Corridor to The Three of Us. But Reflections ended up being way too long. I like where and how it was split, though, as it serves the title themes moving from individuals to couples to a threesome. Hence this book achieves a kind of bridging effect.

Entanglements is mainly about coupling, both romantic and erotic, and the tangling of fighting and also getting involved – for better or for worse. Just as Reflections is about individual exploration, Entanglements begins to show people colliding with each other. Naturally, there is a great deal of collateral damage from these collisions.

Plot

The story opens with Captain Archer announcing the wedding of Tripp Tucker to T’Pol.  As he makes the announcement, the single men in particular are beginning to notice that it affects them. Part of it may be some desire specifically for T’Pol. But it is also because this is the second wedding on the Enterprise. This generational ship is starting to slowly, inexorably, convert itself into the equivalent of a flying small town.

But the real crisis arises from a different relationship. When Josh Rosen proposes to and, eventually, marries Karin Bernstein, it puts fellow Jewish crew member Ethan Shapiro onto a steep downward spiral. That sequence was one of the first parts of the story that I knew I wanted to write and, once I got to it in the plot, it flowed quickly and smoothly.

Music

Dusty Springfield | Entanglements

Dusty says it all

Story Postings

Rating

The story has an M rating.

Upshot

This story is more transitional and so the beginning and the end are a tad more abrupt than for the other three in the E2 series. But I like the bookending of the Tucker/T’Pol announcement with the Jenny/Aidan wedding, and was particularly pleased to be able to use Jenny’s wedding song again – and to denote that Aidan isn’t quite the right partner (in the prime timeline, she marries Francisco).

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Posted by jespah in Fan fiction, Interphases series, Review, 2 comments
16
Jan
2015

Spotlight on Ring Phasers

Spotlight on Ring Phasers

Ring phasers were a quick idea to solve a problem I did not expect.

Background

Spotlight on Ring Phasers

Ring Phaser (actually a Za’Tarc ring from the Stargate universe)

When I originally wrote the Times of the HG Wells series, I had an idea that there would be small phasers. However, I did not really fully develop the concept. Because, in canon, phasers have fairly steadily gotten smaller in size. Therefore, it made some sense  to have them, in the very deep future, be rather small pieces of equipment. This also worked as a cover, for Rick Daniels and other time travelers would need to carry a weapon to a lot of time periods where carrying such a weapon would be problematic.

Appearance

It was not until Multiverse II and Another Piece of the Action that I realized that this would be rather useful.

Spotlight on Ring Phasers

English: Ring made of tungsten (tungstencarbide?) Deutsch: Ring aus Wolframcarbid (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

For characters needing to hide a phaser (and maybe even make it look like something else), the idea of a ring configuration works.

And for female time travelers in particular in history, they could even place the ring phaser onto their left ring finger and claim that it was a wedding ring.

The idea is that the ring phaser is about as plain and nondescript as the idea to the right. Furthermore, time travelers would often have to worry about theft and beatings. Therefore, the article could not intentionally appear ostentatious or particularly expensive.

Upshot

For a small afterthought type of original technology, I think it turned out pretty well. It would not shock me if a deep future storyline, either in the books or some hypothetical to-be-aired series or film, featured something like them.

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Posted by jespah in Fan fiction, Spotlight, Times of the HG Wells series, 2 comments
13
Jan
2015

Portrait of a Character – Von

Portrait of a Character – Von

Von has kind of an odd backstory.

Origins

Portrait of a Character – Von

Von Hayes

I needed a bad guy character for the Times of the HG Wells series. And I wanted it it wouldn’t be immediately obvious it was him. Enter Von, whose name comes from retired Phillies outfielder Von Hayes. So this is yet another backhanded reference to Jay Hayes.

This character was meant to be someone who Carmen and Kevin in particular would rely on, mistakenly, for far too long as temporal damage continued to happen.

Portrayal

I see Peter Dinklage in this role.

Portrait of a Character – Von

Peter Dinklage as Von

The actor is brilliant and interesting; I feel he can play pretty much any role thrown at him.

Frankly, I am a bit surprised that I have not yet seen a photomanipulation of him in a Star Trek uniform or as a Ferengi or any other species (including human).

Personality

A bit secretive and paranoid, he has plenty of reason to be so. This is because he is working in cahoots with the Perfectionists, the enemy faction. But he also has a softer side. There is a garden in the center of the Temporal Integrity Commission. Even though he doesn’t have to do so, he prunes the roses and tends to the day lilies and lilacs and whatnot. He uses an old-fashioned pair of shears that figure somewhat prominently in Spring Thaw.

Relationships

This character has no known relationships at this time.

Mirror Universe

Portrait of a Character – Von

Mirror Von

There aren’t necessarily any impediments to him existing in the Mirror Universe. Perhaps he’d be honorable, but I really would prefer him as being tightly wound.

Quote

“Anyone can use those shears. I know she did.”

Upshot

I like this character but I really underutilized him. I’m not sure if or when or how I could possibly revisit him, but he was a character with potential who should have had more depth to him.

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Posted by jespah in Fan fiction, Portrait, Times of the HG Wells series, 0 comments