Leia at Hazard

In November 2007, I did NaNoWriMo. As with the fantasy novel, I structured the project to let me write it as free-form as possible, thus, minimal pre-planning the plot. Readers familiar with Anne McCaffery's Restoree will surely recognize the inspiration: a young woman with a difficult life is plucked from it by aliens and deposited where she can find Love with a Really Hot Guy. I ripped a large chunk of the structure from that book, right down to the she's-from-the-lost-home-of-humanity bit.

Another chunk of the book comes from my belief that happiness comes from diligently getting one's basic needs filled. Most fiction tells stories without any reference to the toilet facilities, and quite a lot avoids things like food, clothing, exercise, sleeping arrangements, where we store our crap and so forth. Science fiction often has people from widely different backgrounds sharing a culture and a language and so forth with no real explanation (beyond a Babel Fish in the ear). That absence resulted in me trying to build a book length fiction on top of those mundanities.

Leia was partly inspired by a girl I knew slightly in high school. We shared a first name and some honors classes. Sometimes she would sit next to me, because she knew that reduced the likelihood that she would be called upon (I created sort of a cloud of I've-already-heard-from-that-part-of-the-room). She wanted to be a spy for a career. I have no idea if she did, but that, plus a co-worker who handled a no-place-to-sleep transition by joining the military and going through boot camp, and an early encounter with the ASVAB and subsequent recruiting efforts added up to what-would-have-happened if a Nice JW girl figured out she wasn't going to be a JW as an adult and had to pay for college to have a decent life after her parents kicked her out. Answer: do a lot of lying, sneak martial arts lessons under cover of an after school/weekend job, and sign over your body to the government in exchange for room, board and an education. Obviously, Leia is wildly competent. Equally obviously, while she's widely perceived as overly passive, she's just trying to play the odds as best she can and that means watching very carefully before she makes a move.

After finally fixing persistent character (viz. smart quotes) issues in my first novel and putting it up on this website, I thought I ought to do the same thing with Leia. However, I never edited Leia -- she's a NaNoWriMo First Draft and some notes from a single reader and a spreadsheet I put together for reworking the story. I'm still putting it up, but I'm going to be revising in place -- you should know that if you're reading it here, it may change when you refresh the page.

Spot a broken link or other problem? E-mail me. Have fun.

Created: July 9, 2012
Updated: July 10, 2012