Ularti, the owner of the tramp freighter Vanner, keeps Jetay and Khed in indentured servitude, and is one of the main antagonists in Shadow Captain. Jetay’s story arc, as previously told is that of the drifter Drafted Into a Good Cause, and frequently in that arc, there’s a character who the drifter used to work with, who represents the pull away from the Good Cause. I didn’t have a good sense of what that might be in this case, until I hit on the “Hansel and Gretel” framing for Jetay’s situation.
Continue reading “Where Did THAT Come From: Essem and Co, Ularti”Category: Space Opera
Where Did THAT Come From: Lanati, Menevis and Family
This is actually a fairly large body of characters spread across the two volumes of Star Master, even if they didn’t require as much work on my part as Shenti and her family did.
Continue reading “Where Did THAT Come From: Lanati, Menevis and Family”Where Did THAT Come From: Shenti and Her Family
Shenti and her family have probably the most complicated development history of any of my supporting characters to date.
Continue reading “Where Did THAT Come From: Shenti and Her Family”Where Did THAT Come From: Jetay and Khed
The two brothers at the heart of the Star Master tetralogy trilogy duology went through a pretty complicated evolution before I started writing.
Where Did THAT Come From: Samar, the White Knights, and the Red Knights
The White Knights are largely my response to the Jedi: a fallen order of psychic warriors formerly revered for their nobility of character, now hated and propagandized against. They were called Paladins, and the Red Knights were called Pioneers, until the early stages of editing Shadow Captain, when I decided these names would cause too much confusion with the Partisan faction in the same story. Akira Kurosawa, although certainly extremely gifted, didn’t have quite as much influence on me as Howard Pyle and the Story of King Arthur and his Knights, so that accounts for some of the differences between the White Knights and their inspiration, the more samurai-influenced Jedi.
Continue reading “Where Did THAT Come From: Samar, the White Knights, and the Red Knights”From a Certain Point of View…
So, NaNoWriMo2021…not a success in terms of wordcount. It looks like I will finish the month around or slightly under 18,000 words, the lowest results for any NaNo I have attempted. However, I did have a helpful insight yesterday in terms of what I was working on.
Continue reading “From a Certain Point of View…”NaNoWriMo2021
Doing something a bit different this year, trying to work on three projects at once:
–Star Master Book 2: I finished the rough draft of this sequel to Shadow Captain. I think it was a couple of weeks ago, but there are some missing scenes I’d like to add if I can.
–Star Master Book 3: I have the epilogue written and a general idea of what leads up to it, and another general idea of where the story starts. The middle is kind of fuzzy.
–ThornMaster: This is a prequel/side story about the parents of Shenti, a supporting character in the Star Master series, currently being serialized in Kindle Vella. I have three episodes published, and the climax written as well. There’s a few key moments plotted out.
I’m hoping having multiple choices for things to work on will help with the 12K, 15K, 30K, and 40K blahs. We will see.
My NaNoWriMo Word document this year is laid out a little differently from the usual. The last couple of years, I’ve been putting the day’s date in “Heading 1,” allowing me to autogenerate a linked table of contents that allows me to jump from the front of the document to whatever I was last working on.
This year, each of the projects above are in “Heading 1,” and the plot points I know about and want to work on are in “Heading 2,” under their respective projects, which makes them subheadings to those projects. The day’s date will be in “Heading 3,” under whatever plot point I am working on that day. (Let’s not think too hard about what happens if I work on multiple projects or plot points on the same day.)
And since no National Novel Writing Month is complete at Casa Jaglion Press without someone singing about having a long ways to go and a short time to get there:
Rough Draft of Star Master Book 2 is Complete
And…it’s done. About 74K words, but there’s some places that need expanding, and the parents of one of the supporting characters showed up and decided to join in, so now I need to add them to the first three quarters or so of the story.
NaNoWriMo? In two weeks? Well, no, I don’t have a clear plan for that, beyond writing whatever I can of Star Master Book 3, the spinoff story Thorn Master, and missing scenes from Star Master Book 2. But it seems a shame to pass up a chance to get some writing done just when I’m getting the hang of it again.
Kindle Vella is Here!
Mauti and her brother Embo have had their memories damaged by an evil psychic. Now Embo is desperately traveling from planet to planet in search of his missing fiancee, and Mauti is trapped in a dead-end job working for a shady politician. The mysterious duelist Roukazor may be Mauti’s only chance of escape, but Embo thinks Roukazor is the one who attacked Mauti’s mind. Can they trust him? They may have no choice if they want to survive….
Vella is a new piece of the Amazon/Kindle family, geared towards serialized fiction. I’ve started a serial called Thorn Master, set in the Star Master universe. It deals with the adventures of Roukazor and Mauti, the parents of Shenti, the mysterious spy from the Star Master series. This takes place about 27-30 years before the events of the first Star Master book. You can read the first couple of episodes for free here. I am currently working simultaneously on Thorn Master and Star Master Book 2, and hope to have the first draft of Star Master Book 2 completed later this summer, with an eye towards publication somewhere between December 2021 and February 2022.
Currency of Settled Space
In the Star Master universe, Settled Space is inhabited by humans who were abducted from Ancient Egypt by noncorporeal beings several thousand years ago. The people of Ancient Egypt used barter instead of currency, but they seem to have expressed the value of barter-items in terms of quantities of gold (and later, silver).
Unlike its parent culture, Settled Space has actual currency and coinage, backed by gold. Even so, it’s worth noting that most money in Settled Space moves around digitally through bank accounts, debit cards, etc. Two of the major currency unit, the deben and the qedet, are derived from Ancient Egyptian weights. The smallest unit, the bajat, may be derived from the Egyptian word for bee. Below, you can see the values for the deben, qedet, and bajat expressed in imperial ounces (oz.) of gold. You can also click on this link to see the current price of gold per ounce, which will give you a better idea of what debens, qedets, and bajats would be worth in the currencies of our world.
| Deben | 90 oz. of gold |
| Qedet | 9 oz. of gold |
| Bajat | 0.0001 oz. of gold |
Jaglion Press 