Hello from the Caribbean
Vacation, Submission, Convention
I am currently on a large, wonderful ship heading for home, but still in Caribbean waters (and I can’t say I’m not loving that). For those curious about personal things, I went scuba diving with my daughter and an incredible local divemaster in Cozumel. We attempted to explore Nassau, but our youngest got sick right off the bat, so at least we got to visit the Nassau McDonalds. (Next time, Pirate Museum and Chocolate Factory!) Finally, we spent the day on Royal Caribbean’s private island where we all danced, ziplined, rode water slides, munched on chicken, mozzarella sticks, fries, and pineapple (my current favorite fruit) and generally enjoyed life. And now a couple of days at sea, writing, drinking, and watching the gorgeous blue ocean wave bye. (or is that ‘waves go by’?)
What am I writing, you might ask as you wonder where this week’s story is? Well, I am hurriedly working on final revisions (final? I’m so amusing.) for the novel Thassodar Jax: Galactic Ranger. I plan to pitch this novel at the upcoming DFW Writers Convention at the top of October. With luck, an agent will fall in love with it or me (easy, I’m happily married!) and request it, which would hopefully (eventually) lead to its publication. Once the revision is done, there are a number of story opportunities from Raconteur Press that I am thinking to write up and submit to. It looks like a fascinating set of challenges.
But, I don’t want to leave you with no fiction or creativity this week, so may I introduce a few of the primary characters (with AI concept art, as I haven’t found an artist or publisher yet) from Thassodar Jax: Galactic Ranger.
Thassodar Jax
First up, naturally, the star of the show, Thassodar Jax. Thassodar’s home planet, Cobal, was attacked and his parents murdered by a butcherous slave trader named Grote. The young boy was rescued and raised by a Galactic Ranger, and when he was old enough, Jax, too, joined the Rangers and became the guardian of a sub-space planet called Earth. When mixing with the native species, humans, Jax hides his naturally cobalt blue skin and orange eyes. Mingling in with the locals is the only way for him to stave off the loneliness he feels of being the only one in the galaxy from a planet to which he cannot return.
Valentina Garcia
Valentina Garcia is just a Texas college kid with no direction, trying to figure out what she wants to do with her life. Then she gets mixed up with an alien cop when her classmate goes missing, and she is determined to rescue or avenge her friend. After coming face to face with alien ambassadors, smugglers, gods, and murderers, she’s all in to save the world. Along the ride, she may also finally figure out what her own purpose is.
Grote
Grote, enslaver of Cobal and four handfuls of other worlds, went to prison after his attack on Thassodar’s home world, but now he’s out and on Earth. Murder, slavery, abduction, turning people into batteries, it’s all business to him. This four-armed, pig-nosed child of a shady fence has been on the wrong side of the law his entire life. He may be Thassodar’s darkest nightmare, but to him, Thassodar is just a line item on a profit sheet.
Hermes Olympian
Hermes Olympian was Grote’s cellmate in the galactic prison. The Olympian royal family, political prisoners from the civil war on Olympus, overthrew the ship carrying them and crash landed on a small unknown planet now called Earth. Their royal enhancements (electric bolts, healing, aquakinesis, speed, and so on) elevated them to the status of gods for the developing native species. The newly formed central galactic government learned of this situation, formed the galactic rangers to enforce their law, and sentenced Hermes and his family to life in prison. As the last surviving Olympian, he is now old, but still fast, and far wiser than when he had been a god.
Bruiller M. Sholde
Sholde is the sadistic little mad scientist who developed a process of efficiently transforming living beings into raw life energy, which can then be converted into power energy for ships, machines, cities, etc. His mind is all on the science of it, but raw energy also makes a lot of profit. His people had an energy problem, and he was determined to solve it. He started with the dead that were piling up around him. But their life energy was already gone. They were little better than campfires. He moved his research into those about to die, and then those more alive. As his research grew, so did society’s abhorrence of him. When condemned completely, he threw morals to the wind and destroyed his species in his efforts to save them. When he expanded his research to other planets and species, the Galactic Rangers put him in prison.
Jakar-Dorsch
Jakar-Dorsch, who Grote also met in prison, is the tentacled engineer that can bring Sholde’s maniacal theories to life. He’s not really a bad sort of cephalopod; he’s got a great sense of humor, and doesn’t actually want to hurt anyone, but he’s gotten kind of a rough and unguided start in life. He was ‘disposed of’ from an illegal galactic zoo for “exotic sentients” because they already had enough of his type, his parents included. So, afloat in space, on his own, he fell in with the smugglers who supplied the zoo and became an excellent engineer. Naturally, when the rangers raided the ship, he was the only one they caught, so off to prison he went. He could keep his tentacles clean if someone would just give him a chance.
These are some of the major players in the first book of the Galactic Rangers, Thassodar Jax. When there is news about its future, I’ll be sure to let you know.
Bon Voyage,
-Jace
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