The Reluctant Hero

Before Christmas, I fell for the worst ploy. Sign up for a free month of Amazon Prime and enjoy all the benefits—free two day shipping (I really needed that for gifts), unlimited free movies and TV shows (sounded good), over 500,000 free books (even better), 20% off diapers (didn’t need that). If you like Prime, do nothing and we’ll bill your account. If you don’t, cancel before the end of the trial period. Ri-i-ight. Did I remember to cancel? Of course, not. So there I was with something I really didn’t need and had already paid for.

Flash forward to this summer. Hubs discovered Falling Skies. I remember watching the first episode when it began four years ago. Slow, boring. Still, when you have 800 channels and nothing’s on . . . Suffice it to say, we watched the show. I have to say it wasn’t boring. However, this was worse than coming into a play after the second act. Who were these people? Everybody hated Karen. She seemed okay to me. Then the season ended—on a cliff-hanger, of course. The new season hadn’t started for our favorites. Desperation again.

So how are the two paragraphs above connected? Remember the unlimited free movies and TV shows? Ah, hah! We figured out how to get them on our television. We could watch all the previous episodes of Falling Skies. Again, when there’s nothing on besides endless reruns . . .

So here’s where the title of this post comes in. I’ve never thought of Noah Wyle as a hero. He looks too . . . cute. After watching Falling Skies, I finally got it. In the show, Earth has been invaded by aliens with a conquer-and-kill-the-natives mentality. The natives didn’t think too highly of that scenario so after being stunned by the brutal deaths of family and friends, they decide to fight back.

Before the attack, Noah Wyle’s character, Tom Mason, was a history professor. Sure he knew all about revolutions. In books. What did he know about actual fighting? That’s what our military is for. But who were the first casualties of this war? The military, with a few exceptions. So who’s left? Regular people like you and me. People who escaped and hid from the invaders. People who lost family, friends, their homes. People who were scared to death. Ordinary people looking for somebody to tell them what to do.

Their military leader is more concerned about fighting than protecting the civilians. A reluctant Tom Mason steps forward. What good will it do to fight the invaders if there’s no one left to begin again? Tom’s not a natural leader. He’s more concerned about the safety of his three sons. Slowly we watch him become stronger, more confident. He’s not just a hero, he’s Every Man.

When all is lost, we either give up or fight back. Who among us wouldn’t fight to save our children? I’ve never handled a real gun. At a demonstration, I fired an AK-47 fitted with a laser instead of bullets and shot at a screen. Didn’t hit a darn thing. But that wasn’t real. Could I shoot to kill a living thing? If it threatened my family, I not only could but would, for sure. (Did you just hear the Mama Bear in me come out?)

I now see the appeal of Falling Skies. Tom Mason could be you or me. Someone with the courage to fight, to lead. Someone to protect the children. Someone to fight for the future.

I don’t usually have reluctant heroes or heroines in my stories. But in Switched Resolution, a secondary character becomes one. Shy, quiet Communications Officer Lilliam Cabbeferron is caught aboard her starship when rebels steal it. If they find her, they’ll shove her out the airlock into space. She does what anyone would do in the situation—she hides. Until she realizes someone has to do something. Someone has to take back the ship before the rebels kill her captain. Since there’s no one else, that someone has to be her. She mounts guerilla warfare against the bad guys. Like Tom Mason in Falling Skies, Lilliam is a reluctant hero.

Switched Resolution is available at:

Amazon

iTunes

Smashwords

Am I glad I signed up for Amazon Prime? You bet. Now I can (finally) watch Downton Abbey and Doctor Who (the reboot) from the beginning.

Doctor Who and Change

On Saturday night, all Whovians in America were glued to their televisions sets. (Unless they had to do something crazy like...go to work.) For you non-Whovians, the reason was not just the first episode of the eighth season of Doctor Who. It was the introduction of the new Doctor, played by Peter Capaldi. He is the twelfth actor to portray the time-traveling alien.

When the show started in 1963 (yes, that long ago) the producers had no idea what a hit they had. What was supposed to be a kids’ show gained universal appeal. So when the actor who portrayed the Doctor became too ill to continue, the writers came up with a clever device to explain the new actor. The Doctor would die then regenerate. At the end of last season, boyish Matt Smith morphed into grizzled, gray-haired, fifty-six year old Capaldi. What a shock, especially to the Doctor’s companion Clara.

The companion has two roles on the show. Usually female, she keeps the Doctor company on his adventures through space and time. More importantly, she is us, the audience. She asks the questions we want to know. In Saturday’s episode, she reflects our disbelief and confusion at what the Doctor has changed into. Like previous companions, Clara was a little in love with her Doctor. And this new one isn’t him.

Change comes hard for Clara. Just as it does for all of us. We like the status quo. We’re comfortable with the known, the familiar. Yanking us out of where we feel like we belong is traumatic. Marilyn Baron in her book Stones describes quite accurately the feeling when her main character says her husband “yanked me out of Miami by my roots as if I were a noxious weed he was tossing out of a flower garden and carelessly transplanted us to Atlanta.”

I don’t like change, as I mentioned here back in 2011. I’m a new convert to Doctor Who, having discovered him not quite a year ago. In one way I was lucky to find him just before the show’s fiftieth anniversary. I got to watch the show’s progression and many retrospectives. Since then, I’ve watched all the episodes since its reboot in 2005, following its sixteen year “hiatus.” Prior to Saturday’s show, BBC America ran a marathon of episodes and a series of half hour show where the audience could “meet” all the Doctors.

In watching those episodes, I became “attached” to each Doctor and was disappointed when he regenerated—only to discover I really liked the next. I wasn’t prepared to like Capaldi in that role. I thought he was too old, which is kind of ironic since he’s younger than me. I thought he couldn’t be as funny as the previous two. The writers didn’t disappoint. Before the first commercial, I was hooked. The Doctor was hilarious as he discovered his new body. No spoiler here, but Clara was a lot slower to accept him than I was. He had me with his comment about his eyebrows.

While change is difficult, it can lead to new things, fun things. Whether it’s a move across country, our children leaving the nest, or an actor in a TV show, it’s our attitude toward change that makes all the difference.

Happy Dancing

You know that great feeling you get when you finish a project? That’s me. I am doing the happy dance. After nine months of writing, revising, tweaking, I finished the next book in the Outer Rim series, The Chameleon. Almost like birthing a baby. Well, it took as long.

Before I even completed The Pilot, I knew it would be the beginning of a series--a series of independent stories about strong women on the Frontier of space. Once The Pilot was released (December, 2012), I had two other books (Switched Resolution and One Red Shoe) to complete before I could return to the Outer Rim. Meanwhile, I made rough character sketches for the heroines of future stories. Determining whose story I told next presented a challenge. I liked them all. Rissa, the barkeep? Genna, the aide? Nope. Someone new. Jileena Winslott, a.k.a. Baby.

To the world, Baby Winslott is the spoiled, fluff-brain daughter of a wealthy industrialist turned politician, the Chief Representative of the Coalition of Planets. Because no one takes her seriously, they talk freely in front of her. She’s her daddy’s secret ally. In disguise, she's earned multiple degrees and worked in every department of the family business. Her goal? Succeed her father. Now she’s on her greatest mission. If she succeeds, she will prove to him she’s worthy to lead the family business. Maintaining her “public” persona one more time will take every ounce of acting skill she has. On her trip to the Outer Rim, she’ll be accompanied by the man she’s been in love with since she was twelve. Will he see the real Jileena—intelligent, strong, determined—or Daddy’s Baby?

The hero? No question. It had to be the best friend from The Pilot, Laning Servary. Happy-go-lucky, loyal, poor farm boy turned Coalition Security Chief, Laning has a great job—policing his sector of the Frontier. Until he’s ordered to guard a spoiled rich girl on a damn fool vacation. His resentment of the wealthy started when he was a scholarship student to a prestigious boarding school, reinforced by his family being beholden to a rich landowner, and extends to Jileena.

How they go from their initial meeting to happy-ever-after was so much fun to write. Space pirates, desert bandits, a jealous ex-lover, and an earnest suitor wreak havoc and threaten to destroy Jileena and Laning’s tentative relationship. Wait until you see who provides comic relief. (Imagine River Song in Doctor Who saying "spoiler.")

Now that the story is finished, is it ready for publication? Not by a long shot. Next step is sending it to my editor who will find the flaws, the inconsistencies, the grammar and spelling errors. In other words, she’ll strengthen my story. If all goes well, The Chameleon will be released this spring. I’d say when the snow melts but, after the winter we’ve had, that could be June.

As I send off my baby on the next step of the journey, I’m doing the happy dance for finishing the story.