The Mammal Cage

"The Mammal Cage" is the fifth story in Of Seaweed and Chocolate, but it's also the first. Fifth is where it fits in the sequence of the book, but it was the first one written. And it's also one of the original two Chuzek stories that formed the foundation for all the others.

If you haven't read Of Seaweed and Chocolate yet, don't worry. This is a spoiler-free zone. 

In "The Mammal Cage," Piper Craven wakes up in a desert badly sunburned and finds herself among strange people in a world not suited to human life. The locals save the alien primate's life and shelter her from the deadly sun. But when they can't figure out what to feed her, her life is once again in danger. 

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that this story won a contest, and that it was this win that encouraged me to write more Chuzek stories. 

While readers have compared the story to The Twilight Zone, it was Star Trek: Deep Space Nine that planted the idea (in case you haven't noticed yet, this book owes a LOT to DS9). For those unfamiliar, DS9 is set on a space station that formerly belonged to Earth’s rival power, the Cardassians. 

Every time I watched, I couldn't help the persistent thought that the story would have been a lot more exciting if it had been set back when the Cardassians had been running the station--especially since at that time, they had been at war with us Humans. 

(Apparently, the writers of DS9 thought the same thing, because eventually there would be another war with the Cardassians, and they would take their station back, and it was indeed very exciting. But I hadn't seen those episodes yet.)

So while I watched the story that was playing on TV, I daydreamed the story that was playing in my head. Episode after episode, I would imagine myself stranded on enemy turf, suspected of being a spy or saboteur and unable to prove my innocence. 

I wanted to write about it, but a daydream is not a story, and a premise is not a plot. Who is on the space station? Why? How did they get there? What happens next? How will the situation be resolved? I would need to answer all these questions before I could make a story out of the idea.

I explored a variety of storylines in a variety of settings, both Star Trek and not. The one thing they had in common was a displaced human in a hostile place. And I ended up with so many stories about "Kidnappings, Traps and Dead-End Situations" that I started a collection. (The second edition of The Thirteenth Snare is coming out next year.) One of these explorations was "The Mammal Cage," and of course it didn't go into that collection because it started a whole universe of its own. 

It's sort of your typical alien-encounter story, but with a twist, because here the alien is a human and the ordinary hometown she lands in is not Earth. I also wanted to make it different in another way: I was tired of reading about people from different planets speaking the same language and somehow knowing certain basic things about one another from the moment they first meet. So while Piper speaks in this story, and the people of the new world also speak, they do not speak with each other. A disorienting sense of confusion and clouded understanding carries through the story.

And I chose the name Piper because of the poem by Celia Thaxter, "One Little Sandpiper and I." The poem gives me a haunting feeling that feels expressive of the way "The Mammal Cage" opens . . .

. . . with one little Piper on the sand, alone under a vast unfriendly sky.

In the Beginning There Was Vek

In my last post, I talked about why I made the Chuzeks (extraterrestrials in Of Seaweed and Chocolate) the way I did. And I mentioned that the very first Chuzek was named Vek Zoroke, but that in the beginning, he wasn't even Chuzek. 

In this one, I'll talk about the origin of the Chuzek people - not about whether they evolved from protosalamanders on the homeworld or flew in from a distant galaxy, but about where I got the idea for them. 

When Vek first came to life in my imagination, he was a character in a Star Trek fanfic I was planning, and he was Cardassian. 

a Cardassian and a Maquis

The story was to be about a closeknit Human family who lived in a farmhouse in rural Vermont. It was almost Thanksgiving, and everything was mulled cider and cozy sweaters until a sister came home with her significant other, who just happened to belong to the species her brother had devoted his life to fighting (Cardassian and Maquis, for those who follow the story).

After the usual stages of research, prewriting and outlining, I decided not to write it.

I believe that any fan fiction has to be worthy of publication through official channels, or it's not worth writing. That means not only does the quality have to be indistinguishable from canon, but it has to match the theme and tone as well. 

And this story didn't pass the second test because it was Earth-based and didn't involve Starfleet at all. (Starfleet is the quasi-military space exploration agency at the heart of Star Trek.) 

So I decided to wash the Trek out of it and just write it like any other story. That's when Vek stopped being Cardassian and the Chuzek species began. Vek now had an ancestor from the Chuzek metropolis of Zoke, giving his name the meaning "Vek of Zoke."

But I soon realized that Trekwashing wasn't going to make the story work, either. It was always going to feel like a fanfic, and all I was doing, with the exception of Vek's new people, was changing the names. I didn't need to waste my time writing a Trekoid - it was time to move on.

But by this time, the Chuzeks had taken on a life of their own and evolved a physiology and a culture that were not Cardassian at all. As the prospect of success for the story fizzled, my excitement about the Chuzeks took hold and grew.

And it wasn't long before one of them showed up in a story. That was the night I stayed up with a toothache, and the Chuzek I dreamed up this time didn’t come from Zoke. This character’s hometown was a quaint little village in a black-sand desert...

...the same desert whose intense daytime heat and UV rays threaten Piper Craven's life in "The Mammal Cage."

Reviewers Wanted for The Thirteenth Snare

The Thirteenth Snare is a short story collection I published in 2016, and it needed an update. Enter the second edition.

Temporary cover for the advanced reader (print) copy.
I keep fixing the author name, and Amazon's
system keeps messing it up again.

I replaced three of the stories because I wasn't happy with their literary quality and revised some of the others. I also read that stories in a collection shouldn't be in random order, so I rearranged them.

Now the book is in the "advanced reader copy" stage, which means I'm lining up proofreading, reviews and cover design and creating a marketing plan.

I need reviews to put on the cover of the final book, on marketing materials, and for Amazon and other outlets when the book goes live.

But white lies won't help me; these reviews need to be honest. If you don't like something, that would be great for me to know because it will help me improve the book before publication. 

If you're interested in reviewing this edition, click "Send me a message" above, and I'll email you a free copy and lots of gratitude!.