Purple Monster

Sometimes I find I need a mental crutch to get me through things like exams so I tend to have a mascot or lucky type thing with me – even doing a geology degree I did silly things like taking minerals in that are supposed to have certain helpful properties like wisdom and carming influences – of course you never admit thats why you have all the different pieces of what amounts to quarts with different impurities in it (thats why its pretty colours!).

So I found myself wondering about this – I’m considering making myself a writing buddy Wiggly Pet who can sit on or near the laptop and help me out from time to time – I think I even have a fimo laptop made somewhere or they might get a pen or pencil or something like that!

EelKat over on Twitter makes muse dolls some of which I find scary but one or two I really like as does my little girl but they are abit outside my current budget for things 🙁 But hopefully I’ll have enough spare money to get one next year. They are called Xavychups and appear to be faeries of some sort!

Other writing crutches I have are things like my nice note books and lots of funky pens – if I have a book that looks and feels a certain way I feel it helps shape or form the writing so spend probably far too much time scouring cheap shops for nice notebooks! Occassionally people buy me paperchase notebooks which is great – I got a sort of elaborate victoriania with scrolled rainbow design that where actually skulls when you looked closely.

This was a birthday presant in January and by the end of Febuary the quiet thick notebook was filled complete with a few finished short stories!

I was wondering – do other people have writing crutches – I suppose my ritual of continual tea probably counts as a writing crutch too! Or that could just be becuase I’m English :/

Keeping track of characters can be tricky so I plan to draw flow diagrams / charts / mind maps – you know the type of thing that shows the relationship of each character to the main protagonist and to each other.

I also plan to keep a wiki so there will be character entires in this that will be for all intents and perposes an electronic flow diagram with extra dimensions – I love the hyper part of the internet!

Drawing up time lines is also going to be quiet important for a story of this scale – the ‘story’ is far bigger than this one novel that I am about to embark upon writing!

With a wiki I can keep personal files on each character complete with illistrations to help me flesh them out and keep track of them in my mind.

But what is also going to be important is to track who appears in which scene/chapter of the novel and what they have done – so character histories are quiet important I feel.

I need to go and make/bodge together a wiki now I think – hopefully I will make that live too but I’m not promising anything 🙂

For secondary and tertiary back ground characters I may just give a sort of index system, sort of jack soldier a) b) and c) extra.

This novel is starting to turn into a scary sized project :/ It doesn’t have to be as complex as this but I wrote The Drs Wife out with no planning at all and I’d changed the best friends name three times! Not to mention changed the colour of a major characters hair! As I’ve been typing that novel up and editing I have found that I have had to construct these sort of devices to keep track of the characters retrospectively which I feel is probably harder than doing it as your going along!

The Punks mock leather trousers creacked their irridescant pink surface rinkeled and smugged with exhust from her out modded Luniaire 6 the bike of the heavens. She swerved again as the torc connon beared down on her, its surface a mirrored sheen rippling her reflection.

The wind sliced at her – she wasn’t supposed to go this fast without a face sheild but she’d bearly had time to grab the goggles and they were balanced pocerasly due to being rammed on hastily, with one hand – over a mohark of vibrant magenta. She swore as another blast missed but the bow wave hit her anyway making the bike ver of course.

She was heading to the Industs! Industry gone mad – factories and shanty town combined, deralicked and dangerous. Ferrial kids and cannibals, the whole complex was inside a steel cave with old ducting and vents hanging down from the vast roof. It made the shopping malls of the 20th century look like onebedroom bedsits and she was about to collide with it!

There was no time to do anything, her heart hurt, she ducked and she was inside! She’d manoveured inside the Indust! Specks with glowing pallid faces looked up at her – she hooted in triumph – thunder, a roar shaking the steel roof over her head, the world trembeled.

The Punk saw the Torc Cannon rentching its way after her, debris hot and twisted was showering down, the Punk dare not think of those glowing faces. Time slowed, some scense honned in time told her to reach up, with a forced that dislocated a shoulder she grabbed a pipe rough and cold and swung herslef around in an acrobatic move even she could not belive. The blast scorched her bike seat making the synthetic sticky. It adhered to her as she hit the seat but there was no time to worry about her threads – a wall loomed large in her vishion. goggles lost in to the Indust floor below. She jerked the bike and dived, grit stung abraiding her face, she was releived she’d taken her chain off the force on the noise ring alone made her fear what exactly she was going to have left of her nose.

She exited through a window curving herself and the bike to the side – they made it though she gashed her leg, no time to think on that. She headed up on the bike, eyes watering, the world seised to exist, she could see nothing, she was riding on her instincts along. She looped round, the strain on her hips and arms as she clung to the bike upside down made her ache, fire shot through her dislocated shoulder but this adreniline muted it to an annoying buzz.

She jumped onto the torc cannon landing hard, the air pushed from her lungs, her bike with its cracked lumonius paint spiralled out of control, she had to hope they’d think she was still on it or that she’d fallen off with blood lose. Of course the armamont of the cannon should have been wired to fry her. It wasn’t – she mentally cursed herself for not thinking of it and then slowely edged alone the smooth surface. Her gloves gave good traction – they needed to for the sky bikes and she’d paid enough for them. Her boots left black smers on the shiny surface as she inched along.

The Torc Cannon suddenly dipped, she slid a good legnth – being brought to a stop by a head on collision with the service hatch. Metallic blood filled her mouth – she wasn’t sure but her noise seemed to be broken too. Minor injuries she could cope. Jingerly she reached into her acid pink bomber and pulled out her laser pen. Gritting her teeth she vaporised the bolts remembering to move her head just as the hatch was wripped off by the wind.

She slivered into the hatch head first. Alarms should be blearing to say they had a hull breach. Without the wind the inside was erry quiet, her ears ached from the cold and her injuries where mounting but hey FUCK EM. She’d been through too much to let this stop her.

Wiping the blood and grit from her face as she jogged along, the flame boots now devoid of most of their lurid pink glitter she raced towards the mid section where her instincts told her the control room would be – having the most sheilding from both the blasts and vechiles exhurst. The first grey clad jack was around her fifth coner – he didn’t see the laser that vaporised his neck and part of the too shiny bulk head behind him. The reflections made it somehow pretty, a contusion of flowering blood, the Punk felt sick.

She raced on.

She was almost to Control when the blasts behind her started, leaving scorch marks marring the metal. She rolled and run crouched. She skidded to a hualt in Control and ramming her lazer pen into the controls closed the emergancey sill doors – Fools! She’d designed the locking mechanism they should have changed them.

She glanced up at those left in the room, of course they where all foot soldiers and civs, but still they had to have a high clearance to have been sent after her like that.

She held the laser pen like the weapon it was, ‘Where’s the Ocelot?’ she asked quietly. The soldiers looked blankly at each other. And then she saw it, sitting on the commanders desk – being used as a paper wieght – milky onyx. A little cat statue and she would have gone through ten times the pain to get it.

The door behind her rattled – they were attempting to ram it. She edged to the cat and careful not to take her eyes off of the soldiers put in on of her many pockets. Its mass was bulky and hard thumping her ribs.

She lasered the controls. The Cannon lerched. The soldiers skidded, The Punk didn’t they would attack her now, she knew. She flatterned the first past, by sinking her boot into the sternum. A sickening crunch.

The laser pen vaporised anothers eyes , the smell was acrid and seared the back of her throat.

The third however was obviosuly special branch, a gorotte went round her neck and tightened before she’d even seen the movement. A desperate tussel and the soldier went sprawling hitting her head on the consol. The metallic smell of blood filled the air along with the charred flesh. The door was begining to dent but they were descending fast – the Punk ran to the commanders seat and pulled the bright orange webbing around her. There was no screen though and there was enough loose equipment in the room that she’d be lucky not to end up shickabobbed.

She screamed on impact.

….

The darkness was pungent, a stickyness, made her fingers slippery as she attempted to undo the webbing. Once free she clicked the optic in her her piercings, white light spilled from her – giving away her position. The ocelot was pressing against her – it had at least bruised her ribs during the impact – blood lose was starting to be a problem.

There didn’t appear to be any surviors – she grabbed the first aid kits – the rucksack under Control with field supplies and after abit of rummaging and the help of her RFID scanner she found the laser pen. She had to cut her way out the air getting thicker with fried electronics.

She stumbled – she needed shelter and quick – if the Cannon blew then she needed to be underground. She scanned the area – the rocks told her all she needed to know – she had live here with the gypsies she had outlawed – in caves. She stumbled foreward into the darkness.

During my A’levels I did alot of what I thought of as background reading – which was probably just procrastination – doing Biology, Chemistry, Geology and Classical Civilisation I spent alot of time reading up on human origins and space (with the result of being asked if I was a terrorist by the librarian :/) – when I say origins I mean our culture and science/tech as well as biology – I was even interested in the spiritual evolution of the human animal leading to some interesting mixes of books which with hindsight I suppose would have looked dodgy :/

Anyway I read basically all the Leaky stuff about Lakes in Africa and what have you and was always disaticified – I was also contemplating and infact writing a book series I dubbed the Crystal Singer which I may well one day re-visit. It was infact a hard dicission not to make The Punk In Pink the Crystal Singer – but I wanted something fresh – something that would hopefully stay small (haha!) and therefore get completed – plus my writing and ideas have shifted somewhat since I was a teenager (I wonder if I’ll say the same thing in my 30’s?).

ANYWAY! I came across the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis and was spell bound – now its a contriversal alternative to human evolution accounting for us walking on two legs and being hairless and even having tear ducts etc… But I love this theory – it just shouts YES at me. Now I haven’t read the scientific papers surrounding it or anything but again I am using it for fiction so that really doesn’t matter!

My premiss is that the Elves are the Aquatic Apes and we have the characteristics becuase they made us! They I have decided even have webbed hands and feet! And their higher brain function was superior to the other higher primates becuase they had all that fish protein and oil to eat etc… This is why their civilisations where all ocean based!

Obviously I need to think carefully here about how human they look and how much like a ‘grey’ alien – do I want them to be able to pass as human in society or not? And does it matter that Star Gate had the Egyptian gods as ‘greys’?

Well I’m keeping the idea I think – I just need to refine it!

Ok so from basically reading wikipedia and then checking in my oodleplex of books on early human evolution etc… I have ascertained that modern humans appeared 200, 000 yrs ago according to genetics rather than fossils (which say 195, 000) – I’m going with the genes on this one.

There appear to be 14 anscestoral cluster wwith sucessive bottle necks in populations bringing the numbers of breeding pairs dangerously low, possibly as low as 1000 breeding pairs!

Homosapiens was spilt into subspecies Homo Sapien idalti (wise man) and possible Homo Sapien Neanderthalensis (extinct 30, 000 years ago and possibly diverged 500, 000 yrs ago from us!). Another possible sub-species is Homo rhodesiensis (though I want to check that one out more).

We are Homo Sapien Sapien.

50, 000 yrs ago we had full modern ‘culture’ this would be the Upper Paleolithic.

We left Africa 70, 000 (of course some of us stayed put but you know what I mean!). It is this exodus that is thought to have driven our sister species into extinction all of whom came from Homo erectus 2 Ma.

Mitochondrial Eve was 140, 000 yrs ago

Y Chromosomal Adam 60-90, 000 yrs ago (the big gene bottle neck is supposed to be 70, 000 yrs ago and possibly related to a Super Volcano eruption in Indonesia – Toba).

Because I am working on fiction here and not a scientific paper I am reading all the ‘alternative’ theories and stuff too – personally I do think there is a time discrepency with human evolution – I think we’ve missed something in the archeological record and/or the fossil record personally – this leads to fun things to play with for story writing 🙂

I have also started reading a big thick book called Gods of The New Millennium by Alan F. Alford which is full of interesting ideas for my novel! But it is going to take some reading :/

I have decided that I need an Aztec artifact for the Punk and so I dragged out the huge book on Aztecs that I got purely for the pictures when I went to see an exhibition at the Royal Academy – we had free tickets from my friends dad – people who work on the buildings get free tickets to things and he thought we would appreciate them more!

This was back during my undergraduate and I annoyed the others we were with becuase I wanted to read everything and draw even more! Whilst at the exibition I say a little carved ocelot – I thought it was just a cat to be honest – it was out of milky stone called onyx.

I scetched this creater and carried on my slow progress until threatened with violence by the bored members of our group who informed me we’d been there for hours :/

It was the last day of the exhibition and so the book was reduced to a fraction of its orginal price and so was only slightly out of my price range. So with a bit of begging and borring I got the book.

I went though it – having forgotten about the ocelot – looking for a suitable artifact when what should I see in it but the ocelot. I instantly decided that this was going to be the artifact and if it was found after Elizabethan times then there are obviously a few of them and so on and so forth!

I haven’t actually decided what it is or what it does but it is now an integral part of the story!

So I watched The Great Elizabethan Journey or part of anyway as it wasn’t playing right and had to be sent back but I did pick up a few fun facts from it!

The premise of the documentaries was that an Elizabethan dude basically toured the UK and wrote the first ever tourist guide at a time when not only was traveling discouraged as it ‘smacked of rebellion’ but the UK did not yet exist and there were dangerous areas we’re rule of no monarch reined – and banditry was rife.

Using this book Nicholas Cane a cartographer (map making dude) tours the UK looking at various things and telling you what it was like in Elizabethan times!

From the bits I managed to watch I got some good nugets of info:

1) There were many plots against Elizabeth and due to the Reformation there was religous unrest and all sorts going on.

2) there were still on going economic issues from that and the black death.

3) there were food police and you could be in trouble for eating red meat on the wrong day and/or too many times a week.

4) Chicken and fish didn’t count as meat.

5) there was restrictions on how many courses of food and meals you where allowed and there were strict times for upper and middle classes to eat.

6) the poor (empowered by the labour shortage from the black death (ok thats a fact I got from the Financial Times) ) felt it was all a conspiracy to weaken them and so began to shun vegitables.

7) they slept sitting up as the rooms were thuggy with smoke and you cough more laying down plus they thought the devil would steel their soles.

8) Gypsies had flooded in from Europe during Henry’s reign and he had been harsh, and Mary more so – they were called Egyptians and where considered to have ungodly ways and Mary tried to exterminate them! Elizabeth said they were fine as long as they settled down and behaved properlly – if not they death penelty again. Lots settled but many lived in caves to retain their culture – annoyingly I can’t remember where the caves were 🙁

9) Mary Queen of Scots a Catholic ended up staying with Elizabeth and was then a prisoner – she was raised in Europe and was a Catholic Monarch of a now Protistant Scotland though only the Low Lands.

10) Vet and Doctor-esk people where considered witches.

11) Elizabeth set high taxes and was hated for this though she ran things quiet well and effeciently but this was only apprecieted in hindsight.

12) Landscaping and appearances over practicality begain to be fashionable.

There was alot more and I’m hoping to get an undamagaged copy to watch – my plan with this sort of thing is too watch it once and then a second time pausing to take notes!

So I have a world for my Punk to inhabit and the Punk herself and a few plot devices but erm… I actually still have no plot – all I have is constraints 🙁

So basically I am writing this post to try and work out what’s going to happen in the story and why!

It starts in the near future – cyber punk dystopia type thung and she is being chased by bad elf minions who may or may not know what she is.

She is hunting down some Aztec/Mayan artifact brought back to the UK during the Elizabethan time period. This object is actually a piece of old tech from the days of the Great Sea Empires of the Elves ie Atlantos etc…

Part of the story is based in Elizabethan times and during the novel will tell of how she became queen with her nobles thinking she is actually a man! Obviously she has to play a double bluff which helps her cover up the fact she is not ageing.

The origonal hunt for the object begins with her basically encouraging piracy of the spanish ships full of pilfered gold from the Americas.

She recovers the object after much trial and tribulation and somehow uses it to save the day as there are evil plots afoot to wipe out humans by the bad elves.

The end

This is not enough to hang a novel off of – I have no idea what actually happens in the book :/

Any ideas – or dares that could help me with this?

The Elves obviouslly have quiet advanced gene tech so why are they having an infertility problem?

The answer is that the war which posioned the world and initially gave them problems with breeding was caused by a war waged over breeding purity. With successive bottle necks in the Elf populations after the war they become dangerously inbred and no amount of genetic splicing between the Elves is going to help with this.

Every Elf is closer genetically than siblings would be and there are dangerous recessives and they tend to miscarry most of the babies – the loses are high in the vats of IV babies.

On top of that the origonal faction of gene purists are systamatically trying to destroy the vats if there has been any non elf genes spliced in and seeks to annialate the humans and chimera’s.

This translates through the decades to the secret societies that govern human affairs – things like the second world war are part of this as the Nazi elves attempt to wipe out the human race from within. They do their own gene splicing trying to produce weapons to take us and the chimera’s down – this means that all the monsters of old are their lurking at the edge of our existance no matter how high tech the human race becomes.

Humans are regually kidnapped and altered by the elves leading to urban myths of UFO’s and aliens. The Bad elves are hunting the Punk.

There are remnants of the old tech about which often appear in museums as harmless objects – that is unless you know how to use them!

Basically the war that destroyed their civilization is still raging with factions within the nazi elves as well as the other side – I would say that any mention of good or bad is a bit arbitary as in war there are no good or bad sides and no winners.

And yes this is heavily influenced by current politics as well as the second world war not to mention Genisis of the Darleks!

This war is so old that Jesus and other figures of note are lickely to be Elf Chimera’s being chased down by the evil elves etc…

I’m making it all sound rather tacky now aren’t I?

Again this is still world building rather than plot stuff!

I have been pondering my characters for The Punk in Pink and basically I only have one at the moment the Punk herself. But what is she like and what does she look like?

As she is going to be Queen Elizabeth I know that the costum and custom for at least part of the book is ridgidly defined though there are many twists you can put on a personality so imprisioned!

I have decided to sketch what she is to look like, probably using a manga/anime type style though as I like the old sort of Marvel comic look I might go for that or even just try for a realistic look. I might actually try to create her in as many styles and media as I can.

This I feel will give me a feel for the physical her. The dimensions, attitude in dress and what sort of stamina she’ll have for all those gritty back ally chases and the like.

To build the actual personality I am going to write some short stories about her – this normally allows me to build up a multilayered personaily.

Becuase this is going to be a complex novel I’m going to keep a file on stats – who, how, what colour, how many boyfriends etc…

A spider diagram or mind map of relationships and emotions is also a good tool I find 🙂

I’m also going to use the How Well to you know your character article from EelKat, which has questions to answer about the character – this may seem abit pointless and not relivent but anything that fleshes out the character for you in your own mind will help you write.

Fellow twitter terrimain suggests using pictures from magazines to get an idea of what your character or their setting! I suggested that collage would help this along as well if you can not find exactly the look you want though the results might be a bit freaky!

EelKat also has a great technic of throwing together a character in dollmaker or similar online avatar builder type things – I should think second life might even be a good stomping ground – maybe it would be a cool idea to turn your avatar into your main protagonist!