Ziggy, Chet Finley vs. the Machines of Fate

It's the final day of the A to Z challenge!  I'm sure a lot of people have trouble with Z because there aren't that many words using it.  I don't have any stories that use Z but I do have a character named Ziggy from Chet Finley vs. the Machines of Fate.

First off, Ziggy is not human.  He's a robot "angel" who is part of a group of robots who secretly monitor the population of Earth for the gambling consortium known as RIGGED.  (Because the house always wins, right?)

For years poor Ziggy has been assigned to watch the bumbling human called Chet Finley.  Then one day Chet's bumbling with an old computer fries Ziggy's circuits, making him visible to Chet.  It gets worse for Ziggy because RIGGED is going to going to kill him and Chet for the breach of security.  Which means Ziggy has to throw in with Chet to escape the planet.  To do that, they have to find the shapeshifting black widow Sadie and convince her to help them.

The nightmare doesn't end for Ziggy even after they get into space.  At the galactic library his programming gets reset to its default mode, which is as a battle drone.  On the plus side he gets to help Chet and Sadie escape from a RIGGED prison and then meets up with a hot robot assistant to an astrophysicist.  Yup, there's robot sex!  (Also Care Bear sex, both of which I talked about on my first blog back in 2011 or so.)

For me Ziggy is a combination of C-3PO, Marvin from Hitchhiker's Guide of the Galaxy, and Bender from Futurama.  He's kind of snooty, kind of downbeat, and kind of a jerk.  He and Chet might not exactly become friends, but Ziggy does hate him far less than he first did.  If you're wondering, he's not named after the comic strip character; his name comes from the computer on Quantum Leap.  Plus it sounds funny, which is always good when you're writing a sci-fi comedy.

This and the rest of my books are available at the new Planet 99 Publishing site!

Young Hearts

Some people might have trouble with Y but I don't.  I didn't have much trouble with Z either; didn't hardly have to fudge that one.

Anyway, Young Hearts is the third one in the Children of Eternity series.  Like the third Scarlet Knight book and the third Girl Power book I decided to raise the stakes by getting Samantha Young and her friends off the island and onto the mainland, a small town in Maine in what was then present day, ie 2006.  Before I explain what the book's about, here's the one-star review this one lady wrote (and note I didn't go and stalk her afterwards or [until now] whine about it in public):

I really couldn't bear this. Again, I loved book 1. I had high hopes for this series. I don't know what this book had to do with anything.

They go to the mainland and coincidentally meet Pryde's relatives. I was thinking, could there be more to this? Are the links going to be revealed somehow? (Answer: no.)

Mr Pryde is uncannily understanding and helpful, basically taking them all into his home after knowing them for all of 2 minutes, letting them wear his dead wife's clothing, etc. His son then randomly stumbles upon a potion in a cave, which brings out his Mr Hyde side. He supposedly falls in love with Samantha, yet decides she needs this potion too, to be prettier, and they go a bit mental and do some pretty hefty crimes, and yet get let off the hook for all of it and everyone understands? And in the end, they're still in love, despite what an utter ass he is to her. Do I understand it? No. Does this have anything to do with the island of Eternity? No.

And what on earth was going on with that random dream sequence thing with Prudence and what's-his-name where she was literally a fat pig and he rode on her back and they somehow fell in love that way!?

Meanwhile, there's another story going on at Eternity, which frankly I didn't care about. This book was nonsensical from top to bottom. But more than that, this book was WHINY! Every other line (literally, no exaggeration) was someone calling someone else 'fatty' or 'baby' and the other person whining, 'Shut up! Don't call me that!' I actually found it offensive, after a while, the number of fat comments were in this book. I don't know, does the author feel fat and have some kind of complex about it? Because it was just constantly 'fatty' 'fat' 'pig' 'snort snort' or something along those lines. It was actually disgusting. I wanted to slap every character in this book after the first ten pages.

I also need to note: how many flipping times are they going to become babies again? Who cares?

So the first sentence of the second paragraph is right.  Samantha and her friends take a boat they made to the mainland and get picked up by the evil Mr. Pryde's not evil great-something-or-other grandson.  As for the third paragraph, he does help them because duh they're kids and they're dressed in wet, dirty, torn Amish clothes to boot.  Basically she's complaining that he's nice enough to help them--she must be in the Tea Party.

The rest of that third paragraph is misstating the facts.  Pryde's son Joseph does find some weird potions in a cave.  He's examining them when he meets Samantha for the first time.  He's smitten with her but he feels really insecure because he's nerdy looking, not a jock or anything.  So he tinkers with the potions to make a sort of super-steroid to make himself a hunk.  The side effect is that he becomes a jerk.  At the same time, Samantha likes Joseph but she too feels insecure about herself because she's only like 15 and dark-skinned unlike everyone else.  So he makes her a potion that over time turns her into Barbie, the side effect being that it makes her into a total bitch.

I don't know about "hefty crimes."  They steal some beer and later try to rob a bank for seed money.  I suppose they do try to kill Samantha's friends Prudence and Wendell, at least until they come to their senses.  As for the end, they do still love each other because they realize they only took those potions because they liked each other.  The whole thing was a big misunderstanding.

Does it have to do with the island of Eternity?  Not so much.  The potions were used by the Reverend Crane to help keep the kids in line on the island.  There is a subplot where Samantha snoops around town and finds some damning information that she might have been a thief and possibly a murderer before she lost her memory.  Which is another reason she feels insecure and takes the potion.

The "random dream sequences" were not random.  Basically Joseph mixes a potion that causes Prudence and Wendell to trip balls.  Prudence has always been mocked about her weight so in the dream she goes from a skinny cheerleader to literally a fat pig.  Wendell is often called "Wendy" on the island because he's short and wimpy, so in his dream he literally becomes a girl.  Their dreams end up merging so they can fight the Freddy Krueger-ish Samantha trying to kill them.  They don't fall in love because of this; they were already doing that but surviving this together helps to put them over the top.

She really should have cared about the story on Eternity because it sets up the fourth book.  An archenemy of Samantha's (who is connected to the Pryde family) sneaks onto the island and befriends a little girl named Molly.  With some help from the Fountain of Youth, the archenemy becomes one of the children and starts planning for how to take revenge on Samantha.

So you see how when it comes to book reviews exaggeration can be very damaging?  It also demonstrates the need for patience, because the mystery of Samantha and Eternity wasn't all going to unwind in one book--or three.  It's probably the closest I ever came to doing something like Lost, which was on for how many years?  And sure people got impatient with that too--and then the solution was pretty easy to figure out and pissed people off.  Which may be how people would feel about this too.

Anyway, for me the point of this wasn't as much to advance the mystery as to advance the characters.  In this book Samantha and her friends have become teenagers at last and with that there are of course all sorts of new feelings and changes in relationships.  So for me it's really about Samantha and her friends growing up, a process completed in the next book.

This and the rest of my books are available at the new Planet 99 Publishing site! 

Xenophobia

For this A to Z challenge I had one rule--to talk about books I'd published--but now I'm going to break my one rule.  Because I am Batman and the Joker all rolled into one.  For the hell of it I'm going to talk about my only X story (though it's not X-rated) Xenophobia.

Not bad for 1997 tech, right?

It's a Transformers fanfic I wrote in about 1997.  I was in college and didn't feel like writing serious stuff and thanks to this newfangled World Wide Web I could communicate with fans of things I liked, such as Transformers on message boards.  And before long I became the center of numerous flame wars--shocking, I know.  Anyway, some people wrote their own Transformers stories and I thought, Why not me too?

When other people wrote alternate universe Transformers stories they'd always take the apocalyptic approach (even the comics did this) about the Autobots have lost and the Decepticons have won and yadda yadda.  I decided to do the opposite.  What would happen when the Autobots and their human allies actually defeated the Decepticons?

The answer is they turn on each other.  With the Decepticons gone, the humans start to see the Autobots less as liberators and more as conquerors and pretty soon (with some prodding) they start demanding the Autobots leave Earth.  Meanwhile, with the war over Optimus Prime has decided to step down as the leader and go off exploring the galaxy and such, which is I guess the Transformer equivalent of playing golf and fishing.  This opens the way for an unstable Hot Rod to take over leadership of the Autobots.

And of course while Megatron is dead, the Decepticons aren't entirely gone.  A new leader rises up--a female one no less who claims to have been Megatron's "consort."  (Because even psychotic despot Transformers have needs.)  She gathers together the remnants of the Decepticon empire and begins work to rebuild it.

My favorite Transformer has always been Jetfire, the one based on a Robotech Valkyrie fighter, so of course he gets a subplot.  Jetfire and his former assistant--the "consort" mentioned above--have figured out how to make Transformer babies.  The thing with Transformers is that the "spark" or soul of a new one had to be created by Vector Sigma or the Matrix or Primus or some damned thing (really there is no one Transformers continuity) but Jetfire's figured out how to take two Transformer sparks and make a third, akin to how human babies are made.  So yes this involves Transformer sex.  Sweet.

Jetfire's "daughter" is serving as Optimus Prime's bodyguard, and when he realizes they're in for trouble, he takes off after them to try to save them.  And then there's something about opening a wormhole to another part of the galaxy populated by aliens and a stash of nucleon, which is a powerful energy source, much more so than anything currently in use by the humans or Autobots.


Most of this is based on the Timothy Zahn Star Wars novels if you think of the Autobots as the New Republic and Megatron's consort as Thrawn.  And Jetfire's daughter as Mara Jade.  So who's Luke and Han and Leia?  Hurm.  This was supposed to be a trilogy but I never got around to writing more than a couple chapters of the second one.  I think in the second one the Decepticons wrest control of a mysterious new energy source and in the third one they're using it to kick ass on the Autobots and humans, who thanks to unstable elements on both sides are having trouble working together.  Which is pretty much how the Thrawn novels worked out for the most part.  I am nothing if not unoriginal.

An Autobot character left behind on Earth is actually one I created to use in the Doom video games.  Back then you could create mods for the weapons and scenery and stuff.  I only changed the face and maybe the guns a little.  I did another one for a Beast Wars character based on a fox.  His tail became the shotgun in the game.  Those were the days.  Now all I have are my Sims.  If only I could create Transformers Sims!

While I didn't finish this trilogy, I did write another shorter series of Transformers-related fanfics.  It was more of a Star Trek Voyager kind of thing where Skyfire (a Beast Wars version of Jetfire) gets stranded far from home but finds an Autobot ship that was likewise stranded.  Together they start to make their way home and have some adventures along the way.  I was planning as many as 12 stories but quit after 8 because I got busy with school and work and/or stopped caring.  The first book or two in the series are actually a crossover with the Doom game as Skyfire battles the alien creatures from that.  Then there was a trilogy in which they find a planet of Transformers who are distant ancestors of them and they have to work together when the planet goes all Unicron and tries to kill them.


All those stories are written like shit because it was 17 years ago and I probably never bothered to edit it.  Still if you're a Transformers fan you might enjoy it more than any of the stupid Michael Bay movies.  It's only on a blog right now because I haven't ever published it because obviously there are rights issues and stuff.  Maybe if they ever added it to Kindle Worlds I'd publish it through that.  So the good news is it's FREE to read!

The rest of my books are available at the new Planet 99 Publishing site! 

Where You Belong

Seriously, what else would I use for W, right?  Damn straight.

Where You Belong is of course my magna opus about a guy with the unusual name of Frost Devereaux and the strange turns his life takes really from his conception on through what was then the present.  His parents never loved each other; his father was a drifter and gambler whose one night stand turned into about three years when he gets the girl knocked up.  But then when Frost is three his mother is killed in a car accident that also leaves Frost with terrible scarring on his face.  His father is at last free to take off, leaving Frost in the care of his aunt, who largely ignores him and the nurse who delivered him in a car during a blizzard.  (Her last name was Frost which is how he got his name.)

He'd have probably turned into some creepy social recluse and/or serial killer except in kindergarten he meets the Maguire twins Francis and Frances (or Frank and Frankie) who begin to steer the course of his life over most of the next 3 decades.  Much of this Frost is pining for Frankie while Frank is lusting after him.  Starting in high school Frost gets interested in writing and eventually pens a series of children's books called Intergalactic High.

And really if you want to know more about Frost, just read his fake Wikipedia page: http://www.whoisfrostdevereaux.com/who.html
(Five years later and I still think that's fucking brilliant.)

Gay marriage is a large part of the story but I hate saying it's about gay marriage.  Because really it's about all marriage.  The idea is that Frost has two marriages, one to Frankie and one to Frank and neither one works out.  Because marriage isn't about compatible genitals--it's about compatible people.  It turns out Frost isn't right for either of the Maguire twins, largely because they're manipulative jerks.

If you want to complain about Frost being too passive I will scream in your face, "That's the fucking point!!!"  Because it is.  The idea at the end is that Frost has to take control of his destiny for the first time, wresting it away from the Maguires and their schemes.  Because even though we have free will sometimes we let other people guide us to where we don't want to be.

Anyway I have figuratively spent days talking about this book since 2009.  If you want go Google it and you'll probably still find plenty of old interviews and blog posts.  So let me just say it's awesome and it's worth much more than 99 cents on Kindle and Smashwords and $17.99 in paperback.

This and the rest of my books are available at the new Planet 99 Publishing site! 

Vicarious Future, The Changing Seasons

Might have made more sense to put Virgin Territory in this slot but I wanted a spot for The Changing Seasons and then looking through it I saw the title of this story within the story, so there you go.  Just in case you didn't realize there is a method to this madness.

The Changing Seasons was my first attempt at a John Irving-type story, though it does not use the cradle-to-grave type narration of my later attempts.  It's about a guy named Floyd who meets a pretty girl at college and they fall in love, but then things fall apart over four seasons.  I was using the seasonal metaphor back in 2003, about 6 years before 500 Days of Summer.  So suck it, Zooey Deschanel.  (Phrasing!  Boom.)

Floyd is a would-be writer and his magna opus is called The Vicarious Future.  In the first draft I think I included it a lot more than I ended up using it in the final version.  The story is about a guy and a girl starting in like 1917 or 1918.  They fall in love but then the guy gets called up to the army and shipped off to France.  They of course make all the usual promises about what they'll do after the war--which only means something bad will happen.

And it does.  The guy gets caught up in an explosion or hit with mustard gas or some damned thing that causes him to be badly disfigured--and put into a coma for a little while.  Eventually he wakes up and goes back to America only to realize that by then his girl has moved on with someone else.

The guy ends up moving in to the house next to hers and pretty much barricades himself inside like Boo Radley.  He watches as the girl and her husband raise a son.  But eventually the son on a dare or something decides to go into the creepy house and winds up meeting the guy and like Scout he realizes the scary neighbor isn't so scary.  Eventually the guy sees how happy his girl is with her family and decides it's time for him to move on.

The story-within-the-story is supposed to parallel what's going on with the real book.  It's something Mr. Irving does in The World According to Garp and A Widow for One Year among other books.  Or you could think of the pirate comics in Watchmen.  Like a lot of these stories-within-the-stories at some point I could probably write the whole thing for real if I wanted to.  I've just never felt like it.

Anyway, The Changing Seasons is a deeply personal book but also kind of depressing.  Which sums up this Grumpy Bulldog perfectly.

This and the rest of my books are available at the new Planet 99 Publishing site! 

Unhinged, The Naked World

U and X are the entries where I'm fudging the most.  Because there aren't any books I have with U and only 1 with X but that was a long time ago and it's never been published because it's a fanfic.  And I don't think I have any names beginning with U or X either.  So just deal with it A to Z Nazis.

Anyway, the simplest way to explain The Naked World is to say, what if one day Adam West is watching the old Batman show on TV and decides he really is the Caped Crusader and puts on his costume to fight crime?  That's what happens to Henry Barton, a washed-up actor who starred in a 60s superhero TV series called The Grey Knight.  A friend buys him the DVDs of the show and that combined with an upcoming movie reboot of the series prompts Henry to get out his old costume and rampage through the streets of a small California town righting nonexistent wrongs.

Accompanying him is his only friend, a 13-year-old kid named Tony.  Tony knows Henry is doing more harm than good and wants only to get his friend back to his nursing home quietly, so Henry doesn't get into trouble.  That becomes increasingly difficult as Henry gets mixed up with a local politician who manipulates Henry's madness for his own gains.

The story uses an unusual format in that there are essentially two versions of most chapters.  One version is what Henry sees, which is a big city full of criminals in black hats and damsels in distress.  The other version is what Tony sees, which is usually Henry inadvertently terrorizing people who are pretty much minding their own business.  Like in Man of la Mancha there's a whore who Henry thinks is the love of his life; her daughter soon becomes the love of Tony's life.

To be self-critical, this is probably my most pretentious book.  Instead of trying to invoke Man of la Mancha and all that Impossible Dream stuff I read the actual book of Don Quixote, which to me seemed like pretty much the opposite of that.  I mean in the book Don Quixote is a complete buffoon who nobody likes and actually seems to do more harm than good.  This was when the "war on terror" was really looking grim so you could think of Henry as George W and Tony as sane, rational Americans.

At some point I'd like to rework this book to make it bigger because this version is only about 55,000 words.  I think to do that I'd have to set it farther back in the past, before we had cell phones and Predator drones and the NSA monitoring every phone call so it'd be pretty easy to find a lunatic running around pretending to be a superhero.  Though Hollywood has stolen this idea numerous times since I wrote the book; it's pretty much a cliche at this point, so I might never bother with it.

Of course The Grey Knight was originally The Scarlet Knight, but I changed it so as not to conflict with that franchise.  It's also a sort-of sequel to The Leading Men, which recounts the rise and fall of the TV show back in the 60s.  If you want something less pretentious and more of a soap opera, you should read that.  They're both only 99 cents, so why not read both?

This and the rest of my books are available at the new Planet 99 Publishing site! 

Time Enough to Say Goodbye

The second Tales of the Scarlet Knight book is called Time Enough to Say Goodbye.  In its current form it's about Emma having to stop a horde of demons and restore the timeline.

18 months after Emma first becomes the Scarlet Knight, a young woman named Marie Marsh uses her strange powers to rescue a little girl from 1876 and bring her to the present.  Unbeknownst to Marie, her partner the Watchmaker has also taken something from the past.  When they return to the present, the timeline is altered.

Emma wakes up to find the parents who were murdered 14 years ago are still alive, as is her recently-deceased Aunt Gladys.  As if that isn't good enough, Emma's going to be married to Dr. Dan Dreyfus.  While everything seems good for her, Marie is meanwhile trying to nurse the little girl back to health, but nothing she tries seems to work.  And the object the Watchmaker took from the past is the key to unleashing a literal Hell on Earth--with help from Marie.  Stopping the Watchmaker means Emma has to doom her parents, can she bring herself to do it?  (Since there are six more books, what do you think?)

You can thank Michael Offutt for this version of the story.  The original version involved 3 separate timelines as the Watchmaker kept trying to save his dead wife, all while Marie was trying to save her dead friend.  But that version was kind of boring.  As I suspected and Mr. Offutt confirmed, it needed a more badass villain.  Mr. Offutt made some interesting suggestions, most of which I ignored and then threw something together with demons, who were part of the Scarlet Knight universe thanks to the Sisterhood prequel story.

The three different timelines of the original each had a different experience for Emma.  In the first timeline she was pretty much the same, but looked more like her mother.  In the second timeline she was a little kid and living in a trailer with her parents.  In the third timeline it was Emma not her parents who died 14 years ago; in their grief, her parents moved back to the city.  For the revised version I pretty much used the first timeline and skipped the other two.  Sadly I had to lose one of my favorite scenes where a naked Emma wakes up in a little kid's bed in her old suburban house, freaking out the kid's mother more than the kid.  In that scene the kid asks Emma if she's the Tooth Fairy, a joke I reused a couple times in the series.

My most favorite scene of the old version was where Emma meets her mom at her mom's apartment and her mom plays the cello for her.  Instead of cutting it, I figured out how to rewrite it and move it to the epilogue, where Marie Marsh takes Emma back in time to watch her mom play and then Emma goes backstage to talk to her mom.  The only thing missing is in the original her mom figures out who she is, which I thought made for a touching moment as her mom says how great Emma turned out.  That was mostly where the title stemmed from, the idea of Emma having only a short moment to say goodbye to her parents before they die a second time.

But ninja witches fighting demons is pretty badass.  So there.

This and the rest of my books are available at the new Planet 99 Publishing site! 

Star Shepherd

A century or so from now, Earth and its colonies are a mess.  The once-unified Earth has devolved into a bunch of petty states constantly warring with each other.  On Mars the government currency is worthless; instead everyone relies on a barter economy where sugary snacks from Earth are as precious as gold used to be.  As for the lunar colony, no one's heard from them in decades.

The only hope for humanity to survive is to reach out to the stars and find a new home.  A young Chinese woman holds the key to that with the location of a planet capable of supporting human life that's been hidden by a conspiracy for centuries.  To get there she'll need a lot of help.

So she drafts an out-of-shape Martian spaceship captain, a gang of underaged Mexican mercenaries, and a mechanical genius who sells his skills to the highest bidder.  It's not exactly Star Trek, but somehow they manage to get a prototype ship working and journey to their new home.

Except as bad luck would have it, they're soon greeted by a race of aliens who are intent on destroying any other civilization in order to prolong their own existence.

Yup it's pretty much out of the frying pan into the fire--the fire being an intergalactic war for survival.

Star Shepherd is a reboot of my earlier work First Contact.  When I decided to publish it I had to scramble to find a new title as I was already using First Contact under another name.  I briefly called it Escaping Earth as that's largely what it's about.  When I was proofreading, there were references to "Project Star Shepherd" and I decided the last two words could be an appropriate title.  Project Star Shepherd was about building a ship that could travel about ten light years to a planet whose existence had been concealed for centuries to make sure no one could claim it prematurely.  A Chinese scientist who finds that location is murdered, but his daughter turns it over to a rich old guy who funds an expedition using the prototype ship from Project Star Shepherd.

While First Contact uses more Star Trek type stuff like hyperspace and lasers, Star Shepherd is a little more rooted in reality.  They travel the Alien way by going into hibernation for the ten years or so it will take to get to the planet.  And generally they use stuff like missiles and machine guns in place of lasers.  But the aliens have far more of that cool stuff, which they've stolen from various other cultures.

But then there are also some Douglas Adams-esque elements, like a union of mercenaries that runs the southwest of America and spends most of its time shooting up the landscape out of boredom.  There's also a brief history of lunar colonization describing how the first colonists on the Moon were a crime family looking to escape the authorities.

It is as you might say, an eclectic mix.  Or a bloody mess if you're being less kind.

This and the rest of my books are available at the new Planet 99 Publishing site! 

Renee Kim, Betrayal Begets Blood

An odd fact:  of all the books I've written, none starts with an R.  I don't think any even have a word in them that starts with R.  That seems odd as you know popular that letter is from Wheel of Fortune along with STLNE.  I do have a few characters whose name begins with R.  The only main character I can think of is Robin Holloway, but I've used all the Girl Power books.  So let's go with Renee Kim, who is first featured in the 5th Tales of the Scarlet Knight book Betrayal Begets Blood, though she's featured more in the 8th book, The Heart of Emma Earl.

Anyway, the most important thing about Renee is she does not live in the same universe as the Scarlet Knight.  She lives in a parallel universe.  Most everything is the same in this universe except Rampart City was founded by Swedish explorers and thus named New Stockholm.  Because of this there are also a few other Swedish-related differences, like instead of Wal-Mart, IKEA is the store people go to for pretty much everything and instead of McDonald's they have something called Olga's.

OK it's hard to find Goth clothes for kids.

But as you might have guessed, Renee is not Swedish.  She's of Korean descent.  And she's only nine
years old.  Despite being only nine, Renee is in high school because she is a genius.  The idea is that Renee is the Emma Earl of her universe.  Only Renee's personality is a lot different.  She's kind of a loudmouth who dresses like a Goth and dyes her pigtails weird colors like turquoise, neon red, or DayGlo orange.

When we get into her family life, we find out she does this mostly to try to get her father's attention.  He runs his own investment firm and spends pretty much every waking moment running it and trading on the various exchanges.  Renee's mother died shortly after she was born; she suffered from post-partum depression and took her own life, which is also part of why her father doesn't like to spend time with Renee.

Through most of the fifth book Renee's body is inhabited by Akako, the Japanese record keeper of the witch coven from Emma's universe.  Later when Akako has a baby she names it Renee after the little girl who touched her life.  In the sixth book we meet that Renee in the future when she's struggling to control her odd witch powers--she's kind of like Rogue of the X-Men only with magic.  In the 7th book little Renee is kidnapped by bad people while her mother is exiled to yet another parallel world.

It gets confusing in the 8th book as we have three different Renee's.  There's this Renee Kim, Akako's baby Renee (also the evil witch adult version of her), and then a cameo by the Renee Kim of Emma's universe, who is older but largely the same in personality.  Maybe people would find it hard to keep track of all of them, though they never interact with each other.

So basically there are a lot of Renee's contributing to the last four books of the series.

This and the rest of my books are available at the new Planet 99 Publishing site! 

Qiang, Second Chance

Q is one of those tough letters for an A to Z Challenge.  Then I remembered the character named Qiang from Second Chance (Chances Are #2), so I didn't have to fudge it too much.

Qiang is a Chinese woman who works for the evil Dr. Ling.  When Stacey Chance and her friend Madison (who's also Stacey's daughter from when she was a man) are kidnapped, they're taken to an old warehouse and then an elementary school that's been shut down.  That's where they meet Qiang, who's there to take care of them.

It soon becomes clear to Stacey that unlike her boss, Qiang is not evil.  She's only helping Dr. Ling because Ling has connections in China that could help to free her daughter, who's a political prisoner.  Stacey tries to work on Qiang to help free them, but she initially refuses because of what could happen to her daughter if she doesn't help Dr. Ling.

But then Dr. Ling uses a new batch of an experimental drug called FY-1978 on Stacey and Madison, making the former 10 and the latter 5.  Qiang finds out the doctor is planning to take the kids back to China to show them off and then dissect them for the good of science.  That's when she finally decides to help little Stacey and Madison escape.

Her hair matches the glasses!

A symbol to Qiang is a pair of red-framed glasses that belonged to her daughter.  She gives these to Stacey and when Stacey gets new glasses, she gets them in the same color as a reminder of what Qiang gave up to save her and Madison.

One thorny issue I've never decided is whether Qiang is her first name or last name.  I think in the Chinese fashion it would be the first name, though it would come last:  [Something] Qiang.  Like how the basketball player Yao Ming's jersey said Yao because that was his surname even though it comes first.  I think that's how it works.  But she never needs more than one name so in the story it doesn't matter.

This and the rest of my books are available at the new Planet 99 Publishing site!