The first chapter, Joining Day, is posted. I’m off and running! It wasn’t until writing that I realized how much I could make the mother-daughter wedding day jitters scene work. Let me know if it doesn’t make sense to you.
I want the reader only gradually to understand that we are talking about aliens in the scene. I want it to start out as completely relatable, and then hopefully stay that way as readers grasp that this is a very different race on a different planet, although they struggle with some of the same things with which we struggle.
Note that two ticking time bombs are in this first chapter: The first is in Gerleesh’s anxieties about the baby, and the other is in the dangerous effects from the astronomical environment.
I only wrote at 14 words per minute for the first chapter. I’m hoping it will run faster as I go on, but I’m not, as I first thought, just spewing the words. I am doing some sentence polishing as I go forward, but I’m still staying in first-draft mode.
On to chapter two: Bad Sun!
This one went a bit faster in the writing, at 15wpm. Let me know what you think of the ceremony. I want the emotional struggles and internal conflicts to come through clearly, for Gerleesh, as she goes through the process of joining to become a mother.
I wanted, also, to make the joining both very alien and yet human. Gerleesh is the mother of her daughter, and yet she is receiving the egg from the other, and she will fertilize it, so she is technically male in this reproductive cycle. Her species is fully hermaphroditic, and after she has raised a daughter in this way, Gerleesh will start producing eggs of her own, which she can give to others, fulfilling G’hosh’s side of the equation.
Something else that is very different is that there is no pair bonding for the Tarshen. All their bonding is mother-daughter. Gerleesh may never see G’hosh again, but her relationship with her daughter will exceed anything we see on Earth. Her daughter will be born with a fully loving and complete relationship with her mother, as well as much of her mother’s knowledge.
The bit about becoming immortal is something that won’t get a lot of attention, but it is the ripping away from the body of the mind, so that the Tarshen who has hatched a daughter has torn herself free from her physical body to do so. It is what allows them to continue to live, even when their body dies--at least, briefly. It also allows them to control their body and keep it healthy, living very long lives.
Please let me know if anything in this is really confusing.
And thanks for reading!
Brian Groover
Frederick, Maryland
Saturday, 1 November 2014