Bookshelf Battle

I can distinctly remember being a kid, sitting on a beach, notepad in hand, writing down details of a space opera in mind.  The central character was a badass dude in a duster.

Over the years, that storyline has existed only in my mind.  That badass’ name has changed many times, as have his wants, desires, motivations, his activities, and so on.

I’ve started and stopped a lot of projects in the past two years.  Every writer goes through that phase.  Some never stop.  Many always have a number of ideas they’re working on.

I’ve decided that Undesiredverse: Wanted will be my first novel.

Why?

• The heroes are flawed – As we’ll learn, Roman is a degenerate drug addict.  Though he has some standards, he has also done bad things for money.  He’ll soon become a part of something bigger than himself, and be forced to choose a better path.  Meanwhile, Jones was once second in command to the Mighty Potentate.  He’s done something to incur the MP’s wrath, leading him to be stripped of all his supernatural powers and just be a regular, run of the mill alien.  I’m not quite sure we’ll learn exactly what AJ did, at least not in this novel.  But he too is looking for redemption as he’s not thrilled to be Roman’s lackey, but it’s a living.

• The awesome setup –  Roman Voss is a bounty hunter.  Alien Jones is his trusty sidekick/pilot.  Together, they travel “the Undesiredverse” i.e. the collection of miserable planets whose citizens are too corrupt and violent to be allowed entry into the Rakan Collective, i.e. the Mighty Potentate’s pristine paradise one hundred billion worlds strong.

• Villains that you’ll love to hate – They include:

• SOURCEMIND: The dangerously sentient artificial intelligence who conquered an entire planet.  Though he’s stored in a massive mainframe on Omcoros, he could be controlling any machine anywhere.  Is he in your toaster?  Your toothbrush?  Did your TV just switch on by itself?  That wasn’t a glitch.  It was totally Sourcemind.

• THE TARAZNI CLAN – After thousands of years of waging needless wars, a majority of the demonic looking beings who called Tolloo home decided to mend their evil ways and work toward a peaceful future.  Unfortunately, a minority of renegade Tollusks, referring to themselves as the Tarazni Clan, disagreed, seized the planet’s nuclear arsenal, and used it to punish the peaceniks by blowing their own homeworld to kingdom come on the way out.  They’ve been traveling the stars, conquering worlds ever since.  Earth is their most recent acquisition.
• THE ONE WORLD ORDER – Earth’s planetary government, filled with corrupt politicians and bureaucrats who care more about saving their skins than their world’s best interests.  Currently operated by collaborationists who rubber stamp the Tarazni Clan’s demands without question.

• THE VENDRAGONS – Not every vendragon is a terrorist, but there sure are a whole helluvalot of terrorists who are vendragons.  Religious zealots of the Vendragonism faith have separated themselves into two factions, the Red Vendrigo Cult and the Blue Vendrigo Cult.  They’ve been fighting for thousands of years over what color shirt Vendrigo, the holy man of their faith, wore one fateful day.  They literally agree on everything else, but varying holy book interpretations as to whether the shirt was blue or red have led to a very testy situation.

• THE CABAL – the multi-species intergalactic space mafia.  Their hands, hooves, flippers, fins, etc are in everything.  They killed Roman’s family so naturally, he doesn’t like them very much.

MORE POINTS TO CONSIDER:

• The story is easy to serialize – I need to finish my one post a day for a year challenge, but I also have to get cracking on writing a novel.  This allows me to do both.  The plot is that Roman and Jones go on a mission that ends up with them taking care of a very confused woman.  Every scumbag lowlife in the Undesiredverse wants her, but our trio has no idea why.  They become the three most “wanted” beings around and as they avoid capture by various scumbags, the secret of who the woman is and why she’s so important will slowly trickle out.

• In other words – the beginning, middle, and end are clear.  Now I just have to rack up some daily word counts to get a rough draft onto paper.

• But do keep in mind – this is just a rough draft.  It will be polished again and again before publication.

Finally, let me just say, I’ll NEED YOUR HELP.

Please check it out.  Tell me what works.  Tell me what doesn’t.  Point out potholes.  Tell me the problems you see.  Help me vet this and make it as awesome as possible.

Here are the first 7 chapters:

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

And if you prefer the Wattpad experience (it is a bit easier to read on mobile devices) – check it out.