Intolerance

Jan

2013

Portrait of a Character – Gary Hodgkins

Gary Hodgkins starts out with a lot of strikes against him and doesn’t improve much.

Origins

I wanted a MACO who would be, at times, a bad guy, or a guy with some pretty hard luck. Star Trek: Enterprise canon didn’t really cover that, but that didn’t mean that I couldn’t cover it in fanfiction. Enter Gary Hodgkins, who first shows up in Intolerance.

Portrayal

Gary Hodgkins (Justin Long)

I wanted him to be fairly young and perhaps a decent-looking guy who has a lot of bad things happen to him. He deserves many of these bad things, both in our universe and in the mirror. Bad stuff can happen!

I selected Justin Long for this portrayal.

Personality

Duty-bound but sometimes difficult, Gary follows along in the mischief that Dan Chang often finds himself getting into. It isn’t until the end of his life in the first E² kick back, and during the second, that he finally becomes a decent person. In the prime universe’s prime timeline, he doesn’t really get a chance. This is because, in Intolerance, he becomes permanently disfigured and disabled. This forces him to leave active Starfleet service. He’s often paired with Tristan Curtis as they are friends and sometimes, quite literally, partners in crime.

Relationships

Sophie Creighton

Because Gary dies young during the first kick back in time (and he has behaved rather badly), he has no relationship then. But in the second kick back, he and Sophie wed. I only give a little about their relationship but there’s a lot on their descendants.

Their grandson Richard marries Jolene Tucker, T’Pol and Tripp‘s (and Susie Money and Mario Lattimer’s) granddaughter. Jolene and Richard’s twins, Stephen and Stephanie, are married (respectively) to Marie Helêne Archer (granddaughter of Jonathan, Esilia, Lili, and José) and Connor Greer IV, who is the father of canon character Greer (although that character did not have a canon first name or even a first initial).

Mirror Universe

Justin Long as MU Gary Hodgkins (image is for educational purposes only)

Gary has numerous issues in the mirror universe. He is seen in Coveted Commodity, loyally guarding the Empress in Sick Bay and spelling trouble for Travis.

In Temper, in the first temporal dislocation, he loses his life with a lot of other people from both universes when the Luna is destroyed in a head-on collision with the Bluebird.

In the second temporal dislocation, he dies during a Calafan slave revolt. And in the correct Mirror Universe timeline, he is falsely accused (as is Tristan Curtis) and is executed for helping Chip and Lucy get away with the Empress’s twin children, Takara and Takeo.

Quote

“The captain, when he told us all about it, he said he hoped it wasn’t due to a lack of trust. I mean, I can see how it could be really upsetting. He married an Ikaaran woman the last time out. To know that she kept something that big from him, I mean, that’s gotta be hard.”

Upshot

I’m not so sure where I can go with Gary, as he’s got to be off the ship (the nature of his disability means that he’s got to fly a desk). But there’s no reason why I can’t show him before Intolerance, or in an office or civilian capacity otherwise.

Dec

2012

Inspiration – Exercise

How does Exercise fit in with Creation?

For the past five years, I have become much more of an exercise devotée. I had needed to lose a lot of weight and, through exercise in part, I was able to accomplish that. Hence working out has become a part of my life.

A lot of that comes in the form of walking. And by walking around, I see things that I otherwise would not.

And that can sometimes bring on some unexpected inspiration.

Walkabout

For Boris Yarin, I grabbed his name from the Toyota Yaris. I have no particular affection for this car. It just so happened to be a name plate that I saw over and over again for a while there.

Daranaeans are mainly inspired by various dogs I’ve met in my travels.

Exercise also tends to help in terms of working out dialog. I can “hear” it in my head as I walk, and I am away from the keyboard (which means I am away from things like Facebook as well). Plus there’s music. For Pamela Hudson in particular, that character was so defined by her theme music that I received inspiration whenever I listened to Amy Winehouse’s You Know I’m No Good. I mainly listen to music when I am walking, and I would listen to that song over and over again as I was writing Intolerance and then, later, Together, as Pamela has a cameo in that book, too. It was, in many ways, like taking dictation.

Races

I don’t just walk. Sometimes, I run, and it’s was once in the context of 5K races (I ran between 9 and 12 every year until I hurt my knee). Because I was busy dealing with my pacing and timing, I usually could not work out dialog, etc.

However, the sheer act of racing has proven inspirational. I wanted one of the Digiorno-Madden-Beckett offspring to have a weight problem. So I settled on Neil Digiorno-Madden. Neil is the only one of the prime universe/prime timeline children to become a chef (Joss Reed-Hayes also becomes a chef and he even succeeds Lili and Will Slocum in that area, but he is from the first E² temporal kick-back and is not a part of the prime timeline). Hence there can often be weight issues when you are tasting food all day long.

I also wanted Neil to be doing something about it, so he ran a 5K in Fortune. Eventually just that little story was told, in The Medal.

Upshot

I truly believe that working out and getting away from the keyboard have both helped a great deal in terms of keeping writer’s block at bay. Keep putting one foot in front of the other, and one word in front of the next and you’ll get somewhere eventually!

Nov

2012

Recurrent Themes – Medical Personnel

Medical Personnel are a must.

Background

Physicians, of course, are Star Trek canon and are absolutely necessary in space. After all, you can’t just grab the nearest ambulance and hotfoot it to a hospital. You have got to have a doctor on board.

I have created quite a few medical characters as I’ve been writing. I think my somewhat ambivalent feelings about medicine often come into play.

Medical Personnel Appearances

There are so many medical personnel; here they are listed by series.

In Between Days

Baden

Baden is a Calafan doctor seen in Reversal, and is a part of the conspiracy.

Blair Claymore

In Intolerance, Blair comes across as more sympathetic than any of the other visiting physicians who in the Immunology rotation. By the time of Fortune, she is Malcolm‘s CMO on the USS Bluebird. In the Mirror Universe, she is some sort of technician and is no doctor.

Pamela Hudson

Pamela makes her first appearance in Intolerance. By the time of Temper, Malcolm tells Lili Pamela (in an alternate timeline) has become the doctor, if not the person, that she was always meant to be. Pamela has more air time in her eventual relationship with the Calafan Treve, in To Wish, To Want, To Desire and The Best Things Come in Pairs.

Bernardine Keating-Fong

Bernie is the lecturer for the Immunology class. Her name helps to amp up some more of the early gender confusion in Intolerance.

Keleth

A Klingon doctor, Keleth is instrumental in fixing what’s wrong in Intolerance. Almost as importantly, he has, perhaps, the most normal and loving relationship in that entire book.

Miva

A Calafan, Miva is Lili‘s obstetrician in Together and Fortune. It is she who tells Lili that sex with Doug during pregnancy is not advisable. And it is Miva who performs the O’Day Reversal again after Lili gives birth to Declan.

Cyril Morgan

A kindly retired orthopedic surgeon, Morgan is Pamela’s uncle and is grandfather to Cindy Morgan. In Fortune, Cindy brings her friend, Jia Sulu, with her to Marie Patrice’s birthday party and therefore, at an extremely young age, Joss meets his future bride.

An Nguyen

Brittle and somewhat condescending, An could use some lessons in bedside manner. He backbites with Pamela but does offer her a place to sleep when Will and Blair commandeer her quarters. As a physician, he treats a Daranaean woman, Libba, in The Cure is Worse Than the Disease.

Will Owen

Will never actually gets to practice. In Together, Pamela reveals he hanged himself a few days after he was expelled, following the events outlined in Intolerance.

Phlox

This Star Trek Enterprise canon physician is the first to prove Doug is real, in Reversal. He finds the cure in Intolerance and treats Lili as an obstetrics patient in Together.

Mark Stone

As the last of the five classmates in the Intolerance Immunology rotation, Mark is a child of wealth and privilege, son of Emily Stone, the new envoy to the Xindi. About the only other thing about him is he is a gay man.

T’Par

A Vulcan doctor, she is instrumental in finding a cure for Doctor Keating-Fong during Intolerance.

Times of the HG Wells

Marisol Castillo

A femme fatale, Marisol gets few chances to practice medicine, although she does provide Sheilagh Bernstein with physical enhancements during Ohio.

Kingston (No First Name)

During You Mixed-Up Siciliano, he is baffled by Christopher Donnelly’s condition, not recognizing that the boy, in 1960, is infected with what would later be identified as the Ebola virus.

Sanchez (No First Name)

He is Malcolm‘s doctor and is never actually seen. Malcolm refers to him in The Point is Probably Moot, as knowing of a traditional Calafan remedy for erectile dysfunction – tofflin root tea.

Boris Yarin

Paranoid, powerful and suspicious, Boris has reason to wonder about Marisol’s intentions. Much like her, he has few chances to practice, although he also works on Sheilagh. In Where the Wind Comes Sweepin’ Down the Plain, his past is referenced, where he treated an injured Klingon rugby player, Kriz, which was how he met his wife, Darragh Stratton.

Yimiva

She is the doctor for the Calafan unit, and performs the autopsy on Anthony Parker. Ebola and stem cell growth accelerator in Parker’s blood reveals he had been an operative for the Perfectionists.

Emergence

An Nguyen

By the time of The Cure is Worse Than the Disease, An is the CMO on Erika Hernandez’s ship, the USS Columbia (NX-02). This is which is where he loses his youthful enthusiasm. This theme is taken up some more in Take Back the Night. An says he would really rather avoid the Daranaeans.

Rechal

First seen during Take Back the Night, Rechal examines the fetus the murdered Inta was carrying. Findingit was a male, Rechal informs Arnis he must conduct an investigation. In Flight of the Bluebird, he is in the Daranaean prison. But he is still helping to try to find a cure for thylacine paramyxovirus.

Trinning

First seen as a teenaged boy in Take Back the Night, and then as a slightly older boy in Temptation, Trinning doesn’t start to practice medicine until Flight of the Bluebird, when he works as a medical researcher with his unofficial assistant, Trava.

Varelle

Another Daranaean doctor, Varelle refuses to treat Libba in The Cure is Worse Than the Disease.

Interphases

Andrew Miller

Andy starts off as a science Ensign. However, in the E² stories, it becomes obvious very quickly that more medical personnel are a must. Phlox will need help delivering babies. Andrew studies and, eventually, is Doctor Miller.

Pamela Reed-Hayes (Née Reed)

During the first kick back in time, Lili has three children. Pamela is her daughter with Malcolm, and she succeeds Phlox as the ship’s CMO.

The Mirror Universe

Baden

This Calafan doctor shows, in Reversal, that he mainly just follows orders. This is even if they are, ultimately, immoral. Unlike his Prime Universe counterpart, he actually ends up committing murder.

Miva

Seen only briefly in Reversal, the mirror Miva is really only known as the Prime Universe Baden’s nighttime lover. They met when they made psychic contact. She was, instead of meditating, trying to remember the bones of the hand. This is because she was getting ready for her examinations. Seen again in Fortune, Miva helps by setting Lucy Stone‘s broken leg and offers Chip, Tripp and Beth various odd jobs so they can pay her.

Cyril Morgan

Morgan arrives as a replacement for the canon doctor, the Denobulan Phlox.

The Mirror Morgan is ruthless and probably barely competent. In Reversal, Doug says there is a lot of complicated equipment on the Defiant. But Morgan doesn’t seem to know how to use any of it. It is unclear whether he or Phlox kills Ian Reed, and the ambiguity is carried through Paving Stones Made from Good Intentions and Coveted Commodity. It isn’t until Throwing Rocks at Looking Glass Houses where I show just how Morgan got onto the Defiant, and exactly who ordered, and who caused, Ian’s death.

Mark Stone

Some time after Morgan’s death, in The Point is Probably Moot, Mark is the Empress’s new CMO. For him, his homosexuality is something of a lifesaver, for it frees him from being tempted by her wiles. Even so, he spends some of his time fending off the overly aggressive sexual advances of the Empress Hoshi Sato.

Upshot

I seem to write a lot of monstrous medical personnel, but also a number of heroes. For every nasty Marisol Castillo, there is a romantic Keleth. For every paranoid Boris Yarin, there is a sympathetic Blair Claymore. And for each prejudiced Varelle, there is an open-minded Trinning.

Oct

2012

Review – Intolerance

Story Origins

Intolerance comes from dark places.

A friend suggested to me as I was first starting to write Star Trek: Enterprise fanfiction – get Malcolm Reed to loosen up. I bet, down deep, he’s kinky. And so the gauntlet was thrown down. Challenge accepted.

Intolerance Plot

Intolerance

It began with a fairly simple premise, to get an intriguing woman on the ship. Then I decided to add interest by adding a few women. And then the idea progressed to one of a kind of a competition.

Hence I decided that it would be a small medical residential rotation. The specialty would be Immunology. In order to minimize complexity, I decided on five students. In order to add a little Shakespearean-style chaos, one (and their instructor) would have an ambiguous enough name that gender could not be readily and immediately known.

Then the fun begins. Travis hears that there are five students coming. Three, he figures, are female. He tells Malcolm and Tripp – let’s compete for them. They draw straws in order to determine who they’ll go after. Tripp wins the first draw and selects Pamela Hudson. Travis gets the second draw and decides on Blair Claymore. Malcolm is forced to settle for who he thinks will be An Nguyen. But this is the ambiguity, for An is a guy (this was also intended as a play on Reed often being depicted as gay in fan fiction). The instructor, Bernie Keating-Fong, is really Bernardine. But she’s older, and is wearing a wedding ring. It seems that Malcolm is the odd man out.

But Malcolm has a major trick up his sleeve, and writes Pamela poetry.

However, all is not right, not with Pamela, and not with the ship. Without giving away any more of the plot, suffice it to say that it is a rather odd story. It’s difficult to summarize without giving up all manner of spoilers.

Music

Cover of Amy Winehouse

Chip and Aidan show the film Dirty Dancing and the discussion that ensues is a small plot point. It also introduces some of the music, such as Mickey and Sylvia‘s Love is Strange and The Ronettes‘ Be My Baby. But Pamela herself has her own music – Amy Winehouse‘s You Know I’m No Good.

Story Postings

Rating

There are two versions of this story. The version of Intolerance on Ad Astra is rated M. The version of Intolerance on Fanfiction.net is rated T. The difference is the explicitness of the more intimate scenes.

Upshot

British actor Dominic Keating, DragonCon 2008 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This story is a bit of a detour. Of the main books in the In Between Days series, it’s more of a left turn than anything else. It is ostensibly Malcolm’s story in the same way that Reversal is Lili‘s story, Together is Melissa‘s, Temper is Doug‘s and Fortune is Leonora‘s, but it’s also very much Pamela‘s story (as is Saturn Rise). Plus Malcolm is revealed in many other tales that I’ve written since then.

Frankly, Intolerance doesn’t get a lot of love, too, and its read counts are sometimes lower than those of the others. Some of that may be due to the fact that it’s the shortest of the major books, with the fewest number of chapters. But I have reread it (I reread everything) and don’t think anything could truly be added. I like its tight editing. It does very little meandering, whereas Reversal and Fortune in particular sometimes wander off and away from their main plot lines.

Kaley Cuoco

A lot of the elements turn out well, I feel, but maybe it was too much of a departure. I don’t know. I have been happy to use it as a jumping-off point for other works, such as Together and The Cure is Worse Than the Disease. Truth be told, it may hold up better than most of what I’ve written.

Jul

2012

Progress Report – July 2012

July 2012 Posted Works

July 2012 began with creating a context topic for the various HG Wells stories, called

Clockworks: The Times of the HG Wells Collection. The first story I placed into that context was First Born, which is also in the In Between Days context as it’s a bridge story. Also, I added Desperation and Recruitment and then The Honky Tonk Angel.

I then began adding an HG Wells story, Spring Thaw.

In addition, I also responded to a weekly challenge about new things with difficult consequences with a story called Tumult. I also contributed to a Round Round story (still in the works) called Storm Clouds, contributing (so far) sections called Go Badgers, Diplomacy, The Cold-Blooded Blues and Chaos and Control. And I added a drabble called Barely Tolerable, meant to be a missing scene from Intolerance. I added the story of Kevin and Josie (Jhasi)’s first date, The Honky Tonk Angel.

The monthly challenge was called “A Page from the Past”. Hence this was an opportunity to finally create and complete a new Interphases story, Concord. I also placed it into context (the story is in the Interphases series but it also works as an In Between Days prequel). Also, I put An Announcement, Barely Tolerable and We Meet Again into similar context.

On Star Trek Logs, I responded to a prompt about experiencing loss with a TNG story, Loss. I also added Broken Seal. In response to a prompt about rituals, I added Ceremonial.

On Trek United, I added A Single Step. And on Fanfiction.net, I added And the Livin’ is Easy and Cobbled Together.

WIP Corner

I continued working on the E² stories, polishing the third and adding to the fourth one.

Prep Work

I created an HTML version of Where the Wind Comes Sweeping Down the Plain, in anticipation of the next Times of the HG Wells story for Ad Astra. Also, I worked a bit on jespah.com and streamlined the footers.

This Month’s Productivity Killers

The search for work continues to be a productivity killer. I am also in the midst of working on a project for a site where I am a Marketing Associate, so that took up some of my time.

Jul

2012

Portrait of a Character – Blair Claymore

Origins

Blair Claymore began life as a roommate/friend for Pamela Hudson. I intended her to also be an object of desire. However, she would be the “good girl” in contrast to Pamela’s “bad girl” in Intolerance. Her ambition is to be an obstetrician, in further contrast to Pamela’s stated ambition to become a plastic surgeon. Furthermore, her relationship with Will Owen was meant to be almost a model of love and propriety – but there was something under the surface that wasn’t quite so proper.

Portrayal

I always liked Holly Marie Combs on Charmed, and so she was, to me, a natural for Blair. I describe Blair Claymore as a brunette with a few freckles, a nice figure and a big smile. She’s a typical California girl in looks and mannerisms, but I didn’t want her to be Malibu Barbie.

Personality

Blair Claymore

Beautiful and smart, Blair is also kind and caring. She’s the person who worries about Pamela. She’s the one who would have accepted Will despite his issues. But she doesn’t get a chance to.

Relationships

In Intolerance, she flirts a bit with the guys and a few of them – namely Travis, Chip Masterson and probably also Aidan – make various plays for her. But they’re all unsuccessful, as she only has eyes for Will Owen. Pamela reveals that that relationship has been a model of waiting and planning. Will and Blair have been together for about a year before taking the plunge and having sex. They do so under the auspices of “I love you”s. It seems right. They seem destined to wed.

But things go differently and, in Together, Pamela tells Malcolm that Blair is engaged to someone else (as of this writing, there’s no name for her fiancé).

By the time of Fortune, Blair still has her maiden name, but that might be preference rather than an indication of a continuing single marital status. She has become a Chief Medical Officer on a starship, just like her and Pamela’s classmate, An Nguyen. By the time of Flight of the Bluebird and Equinox, she is still at her post. In Bluebird, she’s a married woman. I haven’t decided whether that’s a marriage to the person Pamela refers to in Together.

Mirror Universe

The Mirror Blair’s life, like that of most of the denizens of the other side of the pond, is a lot harder than in the Prime Universe.

Portrait of a Character – Blair Claymore

MU Blair

She’s in Temper, in the first alternate timeline, and has been brought in as one of José Torres‘s playthings, along with Pamela and Karin Bernstein. Little more than a high-priced hooker, the Mirror Blair is probably not much more than a minor Science Department lackey and is certainly no doctor. Toward the end of that story, she reveals that Doctor Morgan has been treating her for bruising although, whether it’s due to José or Aidan or any of the other possible men in the Mirror Universe who wanted her, the specifics remain a mystery as of this writing.

Quote

“I never have to see you again, and I never have to talk to you.”

Upshot

This nice girl eventually gets the career she wants and, presumably, the rest of a perfect life to go with it. As for the Mirror version, with timeline restoration, all contact is lost. So who knows what really happens to her?

Jun

2012

Portrait of a Character – An Nguyen

In order to bring Pamela Hudson on board, she had to have classmates. An Nguyen started off as one such classmate, but then the Daranaeans called and he became a lot more than that.

Origins

An started off as a means of furthering the gender confusion subplot that carries through the first fifth or so of Intolerance. The surname was homage to actor Dominic Keating’s fiancée at the time of the writing the piece. They have since broken up. Her name is Tam Nguyen. It’s a rather common Vietnamese surname. The pronunciation is more or less like “In-win“.

Portrayal

It was important to me for this character to have a portrayal by someone who actually is Vietnamese.

Johnny Nguyen

I was pleased to find Johnny Nguyen. He has acted in films in both Hollywood and Vietnam, and has also had work as a stuntman. I wanted someone with the ethnic look, good looks and also intelligence behind his eyes. He is, after all, a medical student, and is a doctor later.

Education and Career

English: Vietnamese-American actor Johnny Tri …

An is introduced in Intolerance as a classmate to Will, Blair, Mark, and Pamela. This is an extremely competitive medical school program, so it’s a given that he is wildly intelligent. In The Cure is Worse Than the Disease, it’s revealed that he graduated at the top of his class. His first assignment is as the Chief Medical Officer for Star Trek: Enterprise canon character Erika Hernandez. So he starts off as an idealistic young doctor. But he quickly becomes jaded by the treatment of Daranaean women. In Take Back the Night, he has become even more jaded. His idealism is a victim as much as the Daranaean women are victims.

Relationships

I don’t have much about him except for some half-hearted attempts to court Hoshi during Intolerance.

Mirror Universe

I haven’t decided whether An exists in the mirror. Pamela, Blair and Mark do, so it’s possible that he does as well, but only Mark seems to be an actual doctor, whereas the mirror Pamela is a lab assistant/pinup girl and it’s hard to determine just what Blair does – she might also be some sort of Science crewman.

Quote

“Just because I don’t want to make your teeth rattle does not make me a gay man.”

Upshot

Smarter than just about anyone in the room, An is also a bit brittle. His compassion only really comes out when he comes face to face with a Daranaean women’s awful dilemma. He’s a skilled physician, but his bedside manner could use some serious work.

May

2012

Progress Report – May 2012

May 2012 was a month for experimenting.

May 2012 Posted Works

This month saw several additions on Star Trek Logs as I simultaneously pulled back from posting all but the essentials at Trek BBS. The Trek BBS has, to its credit, a lot of users, so there’s the potential for a greater audience there. But I’m just not getting a lot of comments. Hence it’s discouraging and, frankly, I’ve got better uses for my time right now. For me, it makes more sense to respond to challenges there and attempt to build more of a readership. Then I may go back to posting more of my backlog there. But not right now. I finished spooling out Together and that will be it for my backlog there, as of now.

Star Trek Logs

Postings on Star Trek Logs included a diverse collection of mostly stories from the In Between Day series although there were a few different items tucked in there. From the In Between Days backlog, I posted Voracious, Harvest, First Born, Apple, A Kind of Blue, Brown and Friday Visit. New In Between Days stories were The Rite, Party on Risa, Penicillin, Protocols, Pacing and Cobbled Together.

An In Between Days offshoot story was a somewhat revamped version of There’s Something About Hoshi, which now dovetails a bit better into my E² universe. I added a quickie story filling in a missing scene from the Two Days and Two Nights canon episode, called Party on Risa. The Gina Nolan/post-Dominion War universe (Hold Your Dominion) was advanced with Good-Bye.

And I followed up It Had to Be You with That’s Not My Name, which is a prequel to It Had to Be You. I also finished Reversal and began posting Intolerance. Because there have been so many stories posted there, I will finish Intolerance and then hold off for a while so that readers can catch up a bit.

Ad Astra

On Ad Astra, I cross-posted Cobbled Together, Protocols, The Mess and Good-Bye. I posted Harvest (which was cross-posted onto Star Trek Logs, see above). The Facts was also posted, as was the continuation of the Bron-Sophra romance, entitled Truth. In response to the monthly challenge, I posted Equinox, a story that made me a bit nervous but it was well-received so I’m pleased.

I also added And the Livin’ is Easy and First Born in context, and began to spool out You Mixed-Up Siciliano. My response to the monthly challenge (about former enemies working together) is in the Gina Nolan universe and is underway. It’s called Wider than the Sargasso Sea.

WIP Corner

My works in progress include the E² stories. I am close to being finished with the third of four books. Plus there’s various amounts of tweaking that go on in the earlier books, in order to make them work better.

Prep Work

I’ve worked on my website and on cleaning up stories for publication on sites like Trek BBS and Fanfiction.net. However, I am a little worried about Fortune as it contains quotations from the earlier books and some of those may have changed.

I formatted You Mixed-Up Siciliano for HTML. I also created a PG version of Temper.

This Month’s Productivity Killers

The search for work, as is to be expected, continues to cut productivity time. In addition, the blogs were down for a while. Hence I was unable to draft blog entries as far in advance as I like to. I have the time (and inclination to) now, though. Furthermore, my husband and I went to Cape Cod for our 20th wedding anniversary. So we spent time offline, plus there was only one computer between us (my laptop).

Mar

2012

Progress Report – March 2012

March 2012 was productive.

March 2012 Posted Works

I began the month by answering a prompt on Ad Astra about seasons. I had thought a bit about all four seasons but I was stuck a little on spring and autumn. But I liked winter, so I posted A Hazy Shade, which is a reference to the old Simon and Garfunkel song, A Hazy Shade of Winter. That one will go in context at some point. I also added a story about the summer, called And the Livin’ is Easy. That, too, will get some context.

I also started to post A Long, Long Time Ago on Ad Astra. This is really the start of the Times of the HG Wells series, although I had also written a prequel, First Born, which I posted on Ad Astra, Trek BBS and Trek United. On the former two forae, I entered it into their monthly challenges. It did not win either challenge, but did receive some votes.

Furthermore, I finished Reversal on Trek BBS and also spooled out Intolerance. Reversal and Intolerance have both gotten some very nice comments there, and a lot of views.

WIP Corner

In addition, I continue to draft the E² stories. I am in the midst of the third book, and there should be four. It’s threatening to become about the same size as the Wells series. I have had a lot to say, and the characters have taken me in a lot of unexpected directions, for which I am grateful. So I am now beginning to circle back to some of the initial points that I had wanted to cover. But those chapters are rather long, and take a lot of time to write.

Prep Work

Prep work consisted of creating a bowdlerized version of Together and an HTML-coded version of Ohio.

This Month’s Productivity Killers

Looking for work continues to be both a boon to my writing (no real work distractions) and a hindrance (being home all day, I hear every little noise, plus of course I have to look for a job).

I also switched to Internet Explorer 9. While that fixed problems I was having with Flash and Java, it created other problems. So now I can no longer post in the Ad Astra archive, or put reviews there, or respond to reviews. Hence I use Chrome whenever I go to the Ad Astra archive. This eats up time.

Furthermore, my parents visited for a few days, in order to watch my husband and me run the first 5K of the season. Fun but of course, there isn’t a lot of computer time when we’ve got company.

More Distractions

Joining a different forum meant more time spent posting stories (and posting so as to get to know the other people on that board) rather than creating. Plus I overhauled my website a bit in order to better handle links to sites where my work is posted. However, I believe that the changes I’ve made in the website have made it easier to work on when I join more forums. One thing I have to remember is that not every story needs to be posted everywhere.

Portrait of a Character – Gary Hodgkins

Origins

Portrayal

Personality

Relationships

Sophie Creighton

Mirror Universe

Quote

Upshot

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How does Exercise fit in with Creation?

Walkabout

Races

Upshot

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Recurrent Themes – Medical Personnel

Background

Medical Personnel Appearances

In Between Days

Baden

Blair Claymore

Pamela Hudson

Bernardine Keating-Fong

Keleth

Miva

Cyril Morgan

An Nguyen

Will Owen

Mark Stone

T’Par

Times of the HG Wells

Marisol Castillo

Kingston (No First Name)

Sanchez (No First Name)

Boris Yarin

Yimiva

Emergence

An Nguyen

Rechal

Trinning

Varelle

Interphases

Andrew Miller

Pamela Reed-Hayes (Née Reed)

The Mirror Universe

Baden

Miva

Cyril Morgan

Mark Stone

Upshot

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Story Origins

Intolerance Plot

Music

Story Postings

Rating

Upshot

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July 2012 Posted Works

WIP Corner

Prep Work

This Month’s Productivity Killers

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Portrait of a Character – Blair Claymore

Origins

Portrayal

Personality

Relationships

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Portrait of a Character – An Nguyen

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