Ohio

Recurrent Themes – Administrators

Recurrent Themes – Administrators

It may not amount to a terribly glamorous role, but someone has to run things. Enter the administrators.

Background

This role is, of course, canon, although it is not often shown on screen or in any real depth. After all, it is kind of boring.

Who wants to watch someone checking on rations and preparing reports and signing paperwork?Barking up the Muse Tree | Janet Gershen-Siegel | jespah | DNA | Administrators But it is still absolutely necessary for someone to do just that.

Appearances

Commandant Kerig

Seen only briefly, Kerig is the warden for Canamar Prison while Eriecho and Saddik are being held there. The meeting of the three of them hints at more than a little corruption.  Eriecho’s attacks, recalled in Beats and Recessive, assure that something or other happened, and he looked the other way. Or he was a willing participant, like is seen in Eight, where H’Shema trades sexual favors for powdered milk to feed the helpless Vulcan infant. Kerig is the height (depth, perhaps) of corruption in the timeline.

Annette ‘Windy’ Bradley Pollan

Windy attends Kent State during the 1970 massacre and meets Rick (in Ohio). In an alternate timeline, she and her friends fight for social justice, including Alison B. Krause, who is a real-life victim from the shooting. But that timeline has to be altered and, instead, Windy is restored to her original destiny, which is to rise through the ranks at the Ohio Department of Motor Vehicles.  She ends up as the epitome of the soulless bureaucrat. Her less than optimal fate prompts Sheilagh to redouble her efforts to allow the new timeline. Not only would it save Alison’s life, it would, in a way, save Windy’s.

But that cannot be, and so the restoration sticks and Windy is back to being a paper pusher.

Arashi Sato

Empress Hoshi‘s child with a mystery father is good with numbers. Arashi doesn’t really want to become Emperor, even though he is certainly smart enough  (and may very well be the smartest of her offspring). Instead, he performs collections, often sending his younger half-brother, Izo, out to do the strong-arming.  But Arashi would never sully his hands with such a task. He’s far too busy counting money.

Colonel Jacob ‘Jack’ Shaw

Shaw is another methodical type of leader. In a way, he is a kind of counterpart to Kerig in that he is also a kind of ‘keeper’ for Saddik and Eriecho. But  if he’s at all corrupt, it’s only minimally (it’s been suggested to me that the gamete trading he engages in with his fellow sanctuary administrators isn’t completely on the up and up).  Shaw is motivated to try to save the Vulcan race.

Upshot

They might not be glamorous, but nothing will ever be properly funded without them. Administrators make things go!

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Posted by jespah in Fan fiction, Themes, 0 comments

Progress Report – March 2016

Progress Report – March 2016

So March 2016 proved to be another quiet month as school, work, and the G & T Show podcast took up a lot of my time. As a result, there was no new fan fiction created during this calendar month. However, a lot of my older works were distributed to wider and wider audiences. I am grateful for the recognition I have been getting for some of these pieces.

Posted Works

Barking up the Muse Tree | Janet Gershen-Siegel | jespah | Quill | March 2016On Wattpad, I continued to add to Later Days, and therefore I posted Some Assembly Required; The Facts; Linfep Linfep Linfep; Consider the Lilies of the Field; In Memory of Kelsey Haber; If I Could See; Colleagues; The Pivot Point; About Nine Months; Debateand Half.

In addition, on Fanfiction.net, I continued to post Ohio.

On the G & T Show forums, I finished posting Reversal. I then started  with a new compilation, In Between Days, and added An Announcement, Dear Captain, Apple, and Local Flavor.

Milestones

See the Stats page for individual read and review counts.

WIP Corner

I worked even more closely with beta readers on The Enigman Cave, getting it more polished and ready for querying. The story is almost there and I hope it does well.

Prep Work

So I continued to work on the upcoming 2016 NaNoWriMo wholly original story, The Real Hub of the Universe, getting to know my main characters better and fleshing out the secondary characters a lot more. As a result, the project is looking really good and I am happy to be getting ready to write it.

This Month’s Productivity Killers

Work, school, the podcast, family stuff, you name it! I was busy or tired for much of the time, and often both. Hence, there was little new stuff to add.

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Posted by jespah in Fan fiction, Progress, 0 comments

Progress Report – January 2016

Progress Report – January 2016

January 2016 Posted Works

January 2016 kept catching up to me.Barking up the Muse Tree | Janet Gershen-Siegel | jespah | Quill | January 2016 I started another year where, I hope, to not be quite so burned out as I was at the end of last year. School, work, and writing were all really beginning to catch up with me.

On Wattpad, I continued adding to the anthology, Later Days. As a result, On the Radio, We Meet Again, The Play at the Plate, Legends, All You Need is Love, The Best Things Come in Pairs, and Complications were added. I also added Saturn Rise separately.

On Fanfiction.net, I finished A Long, Long Time Ago and I then started to post Ohio.

On the G & T Show forums, I kept adding to Reversal.

Milestones

See the Stats page for individual read and review counts.

WIP Corner

I continued to work on perfecting the story of the Enigmans and also a new idea, a very tentative idea about aliens in nineteenth century Boston. That one already has a short wiki as I am beginning to do the necessary background research. It may eventually become my NaNoWriMo project for this year. We shall see.

Prep Work

I worked on getting Ohio in shape for posting on Fanfiction.net. I worked with beta readers on The Enigman Cave. That story went through several revisions and I fully expect revisions will continue for much of the early part of this year.

This Month’s Productivity Killers

January 2016 signaled some changes. The start of the semester and the return to work made for busy times for me, as did work for the G & T Show. This is my last full two-course semester. I’ll graduate in May but I will still need to complete my capstone project over the summer.

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Posted by jespah in Fan fiction, Progress, 0 comments

Recurrent Themes – Computer Technicians

Recurrent Themes – Computer Technicians

Computer technicians are part of the future.

Barking up the Muse Tree | jespah | Janet Gershen-Siegel | Sheilagh Bernstein's file photo at the Temporal Integrity Commission | Computer Technicians

Barking up the Muse Tree | jespah | Janet Gershen-Siegel | Sheilagh Bernstein’s file photo at the Temporal Integrity Commission

In time travel in particular, someone will have to be able to deal with computers. They are such a pervasive part of our lives. A time travel contingent can’t go to any time past about 1985 without seeing computers.

Further, Star Trek has always had a somewhat ambivalent relationship with computers. Truly, it’s with all forms of technology. The Original Series (TOS) often shows a dichotomy. This is between over reliance on computers versus good old fashioned human know-how. In The Next Generation (TNG), Data is so human-like. Should he have the same rights as a member of a naturally evolving sentient species?

Background

Amusingly enough (and highly reflective of the mores of the time), Original Series actors are shown really only using computers for work. Barking up the Muse Tree | Janet Gershen-Siegel | jespah | DNA | Computer Technicians The same seems to be true for the Next Generation, except when it comes to the use of the fantasy-fulfilling holodeck. Then, it’s no holds-barred.

You need to get to Star Trek: Enterprise (ENT) before you start to see people using computers for leisure pursuits. In the Catwalk episode, a crewman does a crossword puzzle on hers. Jonathan Archer even seems to use his for reading (although Malcolm Reed appears to prefer paper books).

Appearances

Hoshi Sato

As in canon, Hoshi (with the help of T’Pol) often has a task of not only handling the ship’s database, but also in interpreting aliens’ databases.

Charlotte Reed-Hayes Archer

In Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, it is Charlotte, a descendant of Jonathan, Lili, Ebrona, Jay, Malcolm, and others, who sends the first kick-back’s full database to Hoshi. This changes the second kick back in time’s experience rather dramatically, as people already know who they ended up with.  Then the second kick back in time meets the prime timeline version. But there isn’t enough time to load the entire database. And so the prime timeline is left with only knowing what we learned in canon. They never know that there were two involuntary trips back in time.

Sheilagh Bernstein

The specialist in ancient computers is a mid-level Temporal Agent working with Richard Daniels. In Another Piece of the Action, she ends up inadvertently insulting Spock a little, when she refers to his beloved computer system as being primitive.

Upshot

We move closer to real-life Star Trek types of experiences. So I fully believe we will use computers more and more. They will converge, probably. So smart phones and tablets will likely become more or less the same devices. Through it all, computer technicians will need to handle them. I will undoubtedly write about more people just like this.

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Posted by jespah in Themes, 1 comment

Review – You Mixed-Up Siciliano

You Mixed-Up Siciliano

You Mixed-Up Siciliano!

Background

Barking Up the Muse Tree | jespah | Janet Gershen-Siegel | You Mixed Up Siciliano

You Mixed Up Siciliano

So back when I was originally writing time travel, I got the idea of a vacation in 1960 Italy. However, this would be where everything would inadvertently go wrong. Hence, playing off the lyrics of Rosemary Clooney‘s song, Mambo Italiano, and the old Fellini film, La Dolce Vita, the title came to me as did much of the story line.

Plot

At the start of the story, Sheilagh has just threatened to quit the Temporal Integrity Commission. This is after a disastrous training run outlined in Ohio.

Because she can already tell that she’s going to hate letting good people die.

Carmen and Richard suggest an alternative. While consulting with Otra, they ask her where she would go, and when, if she could. So Otra, being a nice Italian girl, suggests 1960 Italy. She adds the film and song, above. And then Crystal outfits Sheilagh in “fabulous clothes” and they’re off.

However, things don’t go quite according to plan. Because Marisol Castillo also takes a side trip to 1960 Rome.

You Mixed-Up Siciliano Music

So reflecting 1960, the music is often horn-driven. Also, The Twist refers not only to the dance, but also to the plot. Plus El Paso was a serendipitous find, and references Marisol rather neatly.

Story Postings

Rating

The story is Rated T.

Upshot

Finally, I love the music in this one, the costumes and the scene settings. So as for the crime and the mystery, it is in this story where things stop being a mystery. They settle, instead, into the characters trying to figure out what’s going on, and the overall arc begins to segue into Spring Thaw. I like it although I think I would have slowed down the crime a bit.


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Posted by jespah in Review, Times of the HG Wells series, 7 comments

Spotlight – Phaseball

Spotlight – Phaseball

Phaseball was a fun invention! I needed something which would be a plausible way that two guys, not interested in each other romantically, might spend some time together. It would be a game which friends would play, and it could conceivably start up some friendly rivalries. In addition, it would play right into the idea of both Daniel Beauchaine and Tom Grant being somewhat macho guys.

Background

Spotlight – Phaseball

Particle rifle (meant to be similar to a game piece for phaseball)

At the start of A Long, Long Time Ago, various time traveler job candidates are approached by the current members of the Star Trek canon organization, the Temporary Integrity Commission. When bringing in Thomas Grant and Daniel Beauchaine, Kevin O’Connor finds these two friends playing this game together on a team.

I intend the game to be somewhat similar to paintball. However, it’s played with either phasers or even phase bows. Like paintball, it is a strategic type of game and the intent is to, in some ways, mimic warfare. Players form teams and work together to attain an objective.

Upshot

With few details so far, I can’t say that even I know the rules of phaseball.

Spotlight – Phaseball

However, I can see it as the kind of game that could conceivably take hours. Yet with phased light, instead of paint, no one gets dirty. Or at least they don’t get dirty from paint. However, sweat and dirt from the outside are a different story, of course.

Will it be back? I can’t say. I do not honestly know a lot about paintball, and Beauchaine ends up incarcerated, so the chances of it returning are currently not so good. However, there is a small possibility of adding it to the Barnstorming series. Because it is a strategic game, it could be a smart outlet for that ragtag team.


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Posted by jespah in Spotlight, 3 comments

Inspiration – Employment

Inspiration – Employment

Employment doesn’t always come easy.

Background

Like most adults of my generation, I have gone out to work.

Cover of "Office Space (Special Edition w...

I’ve had good jobs and bad ones, interesting ones and dull ones. So I’ve had challenges. And I’ve been browbeaten, and I’ve gotten inspiration. Hence I’ve come home exhilarated, weepy, frustrated and exhausted. I’ve had situations that I wished would never end. And I’ve had jobs where I was climbing the walls, impatient to leave already.

These experiences can and do inform my Star Trek fanfiction at times.

Connections to Trek

Kirk and Pike

Kirk and Pike

The best and closest connection is in the HG Wells series. Those stories, in addition to being about Richard Daniels and his enlightenment, and about various romances and of course about time, they are also, very much, about the world of work.

Interviews

A Long, Long Time Ago contains within it a group interview and then a series of small one on one meetings. Otra conducts at least one of these meeting. She is okay with the candidate. That is, until someone else hears her being referred to, by that candidate, as a salad head. That’s a slur, so that candidate is out, and there is no question.

Orientation

Ohio centers around three separate training missions. Carmen takes Marisol to the Mirror universe. Kevin takes Tom to the start of World War III. And Rick takes Sheilagh to 1970 Kent State. Tom and Sheilagh also get various surgeries in order to assist them in performing their jobs, so Boris gets something to do, too.

Vacation Time

You Mixed-Up Siciliano, meant to be a vacation in time (it’s 1960 Rome) turns into a disaster when Rick and Sheilagh are targeted by an assassin.

Upshot

So we like to think that Starfleet personnel just magically appear. And we think that the best people are always in those jobs. Or there is very little effort behind that. To my mind, that never rang true. I think there was effort behind it. And I also think that, sometimes, it’s not the best person who gets the job. Just like real life.

Posted by jespah in Inspiration-Mechanics, 6 comments

Review – Ohio

Ohio Background

Ohio. Richard Daniels‘s second Star Trek: Enterprise adventure in time was put together fairly early and fairly quickly.

Barking up the Muse Tree | Jespah | Janet Gershen-Siegel | Ohio

Ohio

I loved the idea of a bullet’s changing its trajectory and, as a result, significantly altering history.

I also loved the idea of showing the time period, everything from protesting to drug abuse to even free love. The music was another draw, and the discovery that Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders really had been at Kent State at the time sealed the deal for me.

It was an irresistible combination, and the story was relatively easy to write.

Plot

First of all, as the Temporal Integrity Commission begins hiring new travelers, the first one brought in is a specialist in ancient computer systems, Sheilagh Bernstein. Sheilagh tries to decide whether to take the job, and the first part of the book deals with some of her doubts as it provides exposition. In addition, the military expert, Thomas Grant, is brought in, plus a traveling doctor, Marisol Castillo. All three receive various physical enhancements in order to make it possible for them to perform their jobs at all.

Furthermore, they all then go on training missions. Tom goes, with Kevin O’Connor, to the start of World War III (this mission is further expanded in Multiverse II). Carmen takes Marisol to the canon TOS Captain Kirk era crossover to the Mirror Universe. And finally, Rick takes Sheilagh to Kent State.

For Rick, it is open season on the honeys.

English: Chrissie Hynde in concert. Taken Augu...

English: Chrissie Hynde in concert. Taken August 10, 2007 in Santa Barbara, CA by John Slonaker. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

First of all, he ditches Sheilagh and hooks up with Annette Bradley, a student, who calls herself Windy. He behaves more or less despicably, whereas Sheiligh just tries to blend in on campus. However, the party stops when the shooting starts, and Sheilagh’s screams of terror cause a National Guardsman to change the angle of his aim slightly. As a result, instead of Allison B. Krause dying, it’s Chrissie Hynde.

Hence this, and a small incident at the start of the Third World War, throws history into a tizzy. Everything needs repairs, and Sheilagh makes the biggest mistake any professional time traveler can make. She falls in love with the alternate timeline and the good it seems to have done for some people.

Music

Music defines the entire HG Wells series, and very much so in Ohio as the new victim is, of course, a singer. Hence these songs weave throughout the story as follows:

  • Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young – Ohio
  • Shocking Blue – Venus
  • John Lennon – Instant Karma
  • Freda Payne – Band of Gold
  • The Jackson Five – The Love You Save
  • Chrissie Hynde and the Pretenders – Kid
  • Chrissie Hynde and the Pretenders – Talk of the Town
  • Bobbie Gentry – I’ll Never Fall in Love Again

Story Postings

Rating

The story is rated T.

Upshot

Overall, some areas could have used better exposition. In addition, I should have better explored the look and feel of the campus. Furthermore, some things, for sure, happened too quickly. At some point, I’ll probably expand it. It’s on my radar of things to do/fix.


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Posted by jespah in Review, Times of the HG Wells series, 34 comments

Portrait of a Character – Thomas Grant

Portrait of a Character – Thomas Grant

Thomas Grant comes from a very long time ago in my writing history.

Origins

When I was first writing a series of original murder mysteries back in the 1980s, I wanted a character who would essentially be the perfect guy. Now, of course, I know that better characters have flaws. But no matter; that’s how Tom was born, and ended up in my Star Trek fanfiction.

Portrayal

Barking up the Muse Tree | Jespah | Janet Gershen-Siegel | Thomas Grant | Tom

Josh Duhamel as Thomas Grant (Tom) – image is for educational purposes

Tom is played by actor Josh Duhamel.

I like his look although I confess I was thinking of Tom as being darker when I first pictured him. But I like this clearly very good-looking man who is also extremely intense.

Personality

Straight-laced and methodical, Tom is ex-military, and it shows in almost everything he does and says. He does not pursue any of the women at work, as he feels it would be improper. He is there to do a job, and nothing more.

Portrait of a Character – Thomas Grant

But he still wants someone so, when he is introduced to, he feels, the perfect woman, he hems and haws and frets but eventually they are able to get together.

Tom is another distant descendant of Doug and Melissa, and is a very distant cousin of Kevin O’Connor and Rick Daniels.

Relationships

Eleanor Daniels

That perfect woman is Rick’s sister, Eleanor. They meet at the end of Ohio, when the department goes out together. But he hesitates, and she wants him to make the first move. It takes him a few books to get his act in gear enough. He also tells her he loves her under what, to him, are the least favorable circumstances, but it’s even more endearing. When he proposes, she gives him the Cuff of Lo, meaning that their love will endure.

Mirror Universe

Barking up the Muse Tree | Jespah | Janet Gershen-Siegel | MU Thomas Grant | Tom

Josh Duhamel as MU Thomas Grant (Tom) – image is for educational purposes

With little discipline, but a lot of intelligence and will, I can see Tom in the Mirror Universe as being, potentially, an emotionless psychopath. He would almost be the reverse of Marisol.

He would certainly be a far cry from the moral, upstanding hero he is in the prime universe.

Quote

“You were; it was supposed to be, we would go out for a nice dinner. And you’d look beau – uh, more beautiful than you usually do. I would be, uh, wearing a, a suit. And we’d go walking some, some place pretty. And I, I would tell you. But it, it’s not like that. The conditions are, they’re all wrong.”

Upshot

Stories need heroes, and Tom is definitely one. He will return.

Posted by jespah in Fan fiction, Portrait, Times of the HG Wells series, 13 comments

Progress Report – September 2013

Progress Report – September 2013

September 2013 was productive.

Posted Works

Barking up the Muse Tree | Janet Gershen-Siegel | jespah | Quill | September 2013

The month began with posting Flip to Fanfiction.net. I also added Gremlins, Finnan Haddie, Bread and Escape. I posted There’s Something Else About Hoshi to Arch Angels.

On Ad Astra, I responded to the Steal All the Toys Challenge with I Got Married to the Widow Next Door, which takes place in trekfan‘s Chronicles universe. I enhanced The Cajun Caitian with Dear Naurr.

Also, for a weekly prompt about drinking to forget, I decided to concentrate on Carmen Calavicci, and posted It’s Not Really a Reset if you remember it. In addition, for a prompt about below decks characters, I gave some love to Crystal Sherwood, with Preparations (this included a shout-out to the Tellarite sport I’m developing, Kreesta).

I also posted a new Eriecho story, which expands Beats and The Mundane World and is a response to the Expand Your Mind Challenge, Recessive.

Milestones

Individual Read Counts

For individual read counts, the following stories have 20,000 or more on one URL –

In addition, for individual read counts, the following stories have 10,000 or more on one URL –

All of these were accomplished on Ad Astra.

More Accomplishments

Also, the following stories have between 5,000 and 9,999 reads on one URL –

Again, these numbers are all coming from Ad Astra.

Combined Read Counts

So apart from the others at over 5,000 reads for just one URL, the following combine to 5,000 – 9,999 reads when you consider all postings’ URLs –

WIP Corner

I continued adding to Play, which is the second story in the Barnstorming series. kes7 created a great playground for us to collaborate, so I worked on Paradox, a story crossing between Tesseract and Times of the HG Wells. Steff also added Lili as a shout out in her story, The Cajun Caitian, so I added a story where Lili and FalseBill‘s Naurr have a correspondence, and am hoping Bill and I can continue it and eventually place it on the archive.

Prep Work

I added to the Star Trek Expanded Universes Wiki. This included adding more linking to this blog, as I learned that it is proving to be a source of some traffic.

This Month’s Productivity Killers

As ever, the search for work continued, and it could sometimes be difficult to carve out time for myself.

Posted by jespah in Fan fiction, Progress, 0 comments