You’ve heard of director’s commentaries. You get them on DVDs and Blu-rays. I’ve put together an audio author’s commentary for the first book in my Jewel of the Stars series.
I go through the book and talk about the behind the scenes making of the story. What inspired certain scenes or characters? What ideas was I wanting to explore? And how do I feel about it all today?
These answers and more await you.
The commentary is also available on youTube.
Transcript
G’day. I’m Adam David Collings, the author of Jewel of The Stars, and this is an author’s commentary for Book 1 – Earth’s Remnant.
Think of this a bit like the director’s commentary for a movie on a DVD. I’ll be going through the book in order, talking about the behind the scenes of writing the story.
I’m sure it goes without saying that there will be spoilers in this commentary, so if you haven’t read the book yet, go do that first, and then come back and listen to this.
I’ve always associated space with water and all things naval. Star Trek is after all, heavily based on the US Navy, not to mention British seafaring stories like Horatio Hornblower.
When my parents took their first cruise, my brain immediately went to a cruise ship in space. The vessel would be full of all the same fun activities as a real cruise ship. Swimming pool, shows, bars and casinos, and it would still stop at ports of interest to tourists, except they be different planets, rather than different countries.
The setting for Jewel of The Stars was born.
But it still needed a story.
What if Earth was invaded by aliens and became an occupied territory while the cruise ship was out on a voyage, I wondered? The ship couldn’t come home, so they’d have no choice but to head off into deep space, fleeing for their lives, and trying to make a new life for themselves.
The story had now become an interesting mash-up of Battlestar Galactica and The Love Boat.
I also took a lot of inspiration from Star Trek. I wanted to incorporate the boldly going aspect, as my cruise ship visited strange new worlds and encountered new alien civilisations. In a sense, the Enterprise D in Star Trek: The Next Generation felt a little like a luxurious cruise ship. I wanted to use some of the more fantastical technologies popularised by Trek, like teleportation and warp drive (but my teleporters would only work if there was a receiving station at the other end).
I’d have a core cast of characters, who would be the crew of the ship, but much like The Love Boat, I would focus in on different passengers in each episode and tell their stories.
At first, I thought this would be a big thick epic novel, but the way I really envisaged this story was more like a TV series. When I read “The Beam” by Jonny B Truant and Sean Platt, legends of the self-publishing world, I realised that it was feasible to write a series of novellas, structured into seasons just like a TV show.
Jewel of the Stars was born.
The book starts with Captain Les Miller, who is leaving his apartment for his ship, Jewel of The Stars. He’s interrupted by a knock at the door. It’s a crazed man dressed in rags who makes vague predictions of doom if Les leaves Earth. This may come across as a strange scene to readers, especially as I don’t really pay it off by the end of this book.
But this scene is very deliberate foreshadowing. Very long-term foreshadowing.
I’m a big fan of the TV series Babylon 5, created by J. Michael Straczynski. One of the things that really impressed and inspired me about that show was the way JMS planted seeds early in the show that he would pay off multiple seasons down the track. I knew that I wanted to do a similar thing with this series of books. We’ll refer to this incident with the crazy man from time to time, and there is a big payoff coming, but it won’t happen for quite some time.
But in addition to the long-term foreshadowing, I think this scene serves as a powerful hook. In a way, it’s also foreshadowing the events in this particular story. We know this is not just going to be a nice cruise. Something bad is going to happen, or there wouldn’t be a story.
You’ll also notice that I made my lead character Canadian. I wanted to have a very international cast in this book. Not only because it’s set in the future, and even today, the world is becoming a much smaller place. Country borders seem to mean less in a world connected by the internet. But also, because I’ve noticed that cruise ships in particular are a melting pot of different nationalities. The staff that work on these ships come from all over the world. I definitely noticed that on the two cruises that I’ve taken.
Being Australian, I wanted to have one or two Aussies in the cast but wanted a more traditional North American type for the lead, as you often see in science fiction. I thought Canadian would be a slight twist on the usual American.
As he arrives on board the ship, Les remembers his late wife, Joannah. We now know that our captain is a widower.
Our first hint that the crazy guy on Les’s doorstep was on to something comes as Director Mallick diverts Jewel of The Stars from its anticipated stop at Alpha Centuri,
In the next chapter, we meet our second point of view character, Braxton. He’s also our first Australian. I intended that the Sydney spaceport would be located in the same place the current Sydney airport sites. I had it in my head that you’d have a nice view of the opera house and harbour bridge, and you do often get a decent view of them as you take off, but you can’t see them from the airport itself. So, the spaceport is obviously quite a bit closer than the airport.
Anyway, I wanted the spaceport to feel very much like an airport. Departure gates have teleport chambers that take you up to your ship.
Personality wise, Braxton is the opposite of Les. They will be clashing quite a bit, which will lead to conflict -the essential ingredient of drama.
I wanted to include cameos of some of the passenger characters that we’d be meeting through the first season in this first episode. This idea was inspired by the flashbacks in Lost. The first of these cameos is a teenage girl walking through the terminal.
Braxton’s aversion to tipping is typical of our Australian culture. Tipping is not part of our culture at all, so it is very alien and uncomfortable to us. I’m glad that the Carnival cruises I’ve taken were quite Australianised. They paid their staff a bit more than usual and there was no expectation for tipping.
Braxton gets a message from a former shipmate, Jane, about the loss the of HMAS Adelaide. This is a reference to my prequel short story – Fall of the HMAS Adelaide. If you haven’t read it, I would highly recommend that you do. You can get it free by signing up to my email list at adamdavidcollings.com/free.
This is more ominous foreshadowing that something bad is out there, but it’s not common knowledge.
At this point, the governments of Earth know about the coming Dracnor invasion from the Adelaide’s message. This is why they want all space traffic clear of Alpha Centuri where fleets are massing to engage.
When Jewel of The Stars goes to warp, I describe the characters seeing a white orb through the front window. When I was writing this, I did a little research into what it might look like if you were travelling through warp, or hyperspace, if such a thing were possible. The suggestion was that rather than seeing streaking stars, which makes for an awesome visual in TV and movies, you’d see a concentrated orb of white light. My source for this information is long forgotten, but I thought it bore an explanation here.
In chapter 3, we’re introduced to our last point-of-view character. I try to stick to just three in each of these books, because more than that is generally considered too much for a novella, although these books are a unique kind of beast. While they are novellas, and need to function as such, they’re also part of a much larger whole. That’s why I feel justified in not just sticking to one single point of view per book (which you’ll often find in novellas). This is very much an ensemble story, and I need multiple points of view to tell it.
So, Haylee is very much a reflection of who I was when I was writing this book. There are aspects of me in all 3 protagonists, but Haylee most of all.
Back in 2014, I was made redundant at my work. This was a frightening time for me. I actually finished the first draft of this book during that time. I’d spend half of the day working on my resume and job hunting, and the other half of the day writing.
I was also very much struggling with the challenges of raising a child with autism. I felt so inadequate to the task.
In a lot of ways, I was working through my challenges by writing this character.
Interestingly, in the first draft, it was the husband, Ronald, who was the point of view character. After getting some feedback from an editor, that I needed to make my protagonists more distinct from each other, I had the epiphany that I should be telling this part of the story through the wife, Haylee. I think it works much better that way. Plus, it distances the character from myself a little more so it doesn’t just feel like a self-insert. Looking back, making that change was definitely the right move.
The one thing I’d change about this, if I were writing it today, is that in addition to exploring the challenges of raising an autistic child, I’d also explore the challenges of being an autistic child. I feel a little uncomfortable about how I seem to be portraying this “woe is me” attitude, and not really showing how hard things can be for the child.
But, this is a reflection of how I was feeling at the time I wrote it. It’s raw and it’s genuine. But, we learn and grow over time.
On a cruise ship, changes to the schedule are not uncommon. I’ve been on 2 cruises. Both times, an advertised stop was cancelled, the island of Mare. The first time it was because of the weather. It wasn’t safe to tender to shore. The second time, it was scheduled maintenance to the ship that had to be done. So, to this day, I’ve never set foot on that island. We like to joke that if you want to visit Mare, don’t be on the same ship as my family. Maybe we’re bad luck.
In this story, of course, the change in destination is because of an impending battle with aliens.
We get a brief mention of Dalia Spring, who will be a long-term antagonist in the series.
We’re building up the mystery of what is happening at Alpha Centauri. Maya has discovered that there is a buildup of military ships, which seems odd just for solar flares. The reader is left wondering, for a little longer.
In story structure, we refer to this moment as the inciting event. It occurs halfway through the first act. Something significant has happened to shake up the world, but the protagonist is not fully involved in it yet. That will happen at the first plot point, which marks the shift into act 2.
We learn here that in the world of this series, Earth has not yet made first contact with aliens, but they do know that alien life exists, or at least, has existed. Alien ruins were found on Kepler-22 in the past. (We’ll learn more about this later in the series). But humanity have not yet met a living alien.
That’s about to change.
When Braxton goes to the bar, we get our next cameo. A retired Japanese couple. These characters will have their own story later in the season. Braxton tells them he used to be in the Australian Space Navy. So here, I’m making it clear that in the Jewel of The Stars universe, Earth doesn’t have a unified government or military. Individual nations still exist and have their own space navies. This makes it distinct from worlds like Star Trek. In fact, in Star Trek, it’s not just Earth. The federation is a unifying government over many planets with different species. Starfleet belonging to that organisation, even though it had its roots on Earth.
We also learn in this scene that Braxton not only knows Dalia Spring, but has history with her. She is the reason he’s not in the military anymore. We’ll learn more about this history as the series goes on.
I wrote this first book before I’d been on a cruise myself. There are some things I’d have done differently after having the experience for real.
The way I describe the show doesn’t feel quite right. And I’d portray the cruise director differently as well. He’s a little too stiff and formal in this book. In reality, the cruise director is the big cool celebrity that everybody loves. The cruise director is everyone’s best friend.
On our way out of the theatre, we meet our next cameo characters. Avaline and Daniel, a newlywed couple who will feature prominently in book 2.
I often wonder if readers notice and remember these encounters, or if they’re the kind of thing you can only appreciate on a second reading.
In chapter 6 we reach that first plot point I was talking about. The truth comes out. An alien invasion fleet has broken through the lines at Alpha Centauri and is heading toward Earth. All ships currently away from earth are urged to flee.
Our characters are now drawn into this situation. Not the invasion itself, but they can’t go home. They have a unique opportunity to flee and perhaps avoid what’s coming.
This scene plays out in a traditional conference room setting, which was a staple of Star Trek. This was a trope I wanted to replicate in Jewel of The Stars. We get to see all the senior crew together discussing the problems that face them. The scene is also an opportunity to introduce a few characters we haven’t seen yet, including Doctor Clark, and chief engineer Sarah McLaughlan, who is our second Aussie character.
We get a second cameo from Crystal, the girl from the spaceport, as Braxton sees her working in the kid’s program. He hacks into a terminal and learns the truth. Earth has been invaded. The battle is over. Earth lost.
I don’t spend any time showing the battle in Alpha Centauri, or on earth, because this story is about the crew and passengers of Jewel of The Stars.
I have written a novel about the invasion as seen through the eyes of a family on Earth. At the time of this recording, that book is not published, but it will be at some point.
We meet our security chief, Jaylen Banks for the first time when Braxton is escorted to a cell. He’ll feature pretty heavily in most of the stories in this season.
So Captain Miller comes to the cell and recruits Braxton as his military advisor. Braxton’s presence on the ship is a bit of a Godsend to Miller, who is a cruise ship captain with no experience in military situations.
The interplay and conflict between these two characters will be the source of most of the internal conflict in the rest of the book. They’ll have to learn to appreciate each other’s perspectives, and both bend a little if they’re to make it out of this situation alive.
This relationship was a lot of fun to write.
Braxton’s recruitment marks the first time a passenger becomes a member of the crew. As these books continue, the line between passenger crew will become gradually, but increasingly blurred.
There’s a nice moment between Haylee and Ronald as she tries to work through all the hurts and fears she’s feeling about her redundancy. Not to mention the inadequacies she’s feeling as a parent. Again, this is unpacking some of the struggles I was working through when I wrote the book.
This tender moment between husband and wife is interrupted when Captain Miller finally makes his announcement. It made a lot of sense to see the announcement through Haylee’s eyes. You always want to try to tell a scene from the point of view of the character who has the most to lose. Right now, that’s the passengers, who have no idea that their idyllic holiday is about to end and be replaced with bone-chilling fear for their lives, and their loved ones.
In this episode, Haylee is our representative among the passengers.
Usually, announcements like this would be made by the cruise director. The captain makes the big decisions, but the cruise director communicates these decisions to the passengers.
But I guess in this case, with this being such a big deal, it might make sense for Captain Miller to want to do it himself. But this is one of those small changes I would have made, if I’d gone on my first cruise before publishing this book.
The next conference room scene is a good opportunity to fully introduce all of the ship’s senior crew. We’ve met most of them, at least in passing, but with Braxton being a newcomer to the table, it’s an opportunity to reinforce their names and positions in a way that doesn’t feel repetitive. It can be a challenge to get all the characters sorted in your head when you’re reading an ensemble story like this.
There’s a sentence here, when Braxton meets Glen.
“Our cruise director, Glen Price.” A man in his thirties, stiff in his suit and tie, flashed a plastic smile. Braxton forced himself to return it.
This scene is from Braxton’s perspective, so it’s coloured by his attitude toward all of this. Braxton is a military man. There would be no place for someone like Glen on any crew he’s served on in the past. So, in that sense, it works. But this sentence is the number one thing I would have done differently after going on my first cruise.
I had cruise directors pegged all wrong. For a start, they don’t walk around in a suit and tie. I portray him here as really fake, almost like a used car salesman. But that’s just not who he is, who he should be.
In this meeting, the crew formulate their plan. Their response to the events of the first plot point.
All agree they need to flee into unexplored space, putting as much distance between them and the invading alien ships as possible.
But Braxton sees potential danger. The ship could get ambushed along the way. They currently have no way to defend themselves. He proposes a dangerous mission to retrieve weapons from a downed earth warship.
This is when we begin to explore the conflict between Miller and Braxton. Miller is very much a cautious, play-it-safe kind of guy. Braxton is a more gung-ho type. He’s used to taking calculated risks. It’s part of his job.
If any of our characters are going to come out of this story alive, these two are going to have to find some middle ground and learn to work together. This brings the important internal conflict into the story. The book would lose readers’ interest quickly if the conflict was just centred around the threat of the aliens – who we haven’t even met yet. At their core, stories are about people, and we need some internal conflict.
Technically, the disagreement between these two is another form of external conflict, but the changes they need to make within to overcome it are internal.
Our next scene explores a big challenge in parenting. We all want to protect our kids from the big scary world out there, but sometimes we can’t. Haylee wants to let her kids live in a little protective bubble of comfortable ignorance as long as possible. Just one more normal day when they can enjoy themselves and not have to worry about what’s going on.
They’ll have to tell their kids at some point. But she wants to delay it, as a gift to them.
And there is some wisdom in that. As parents, it’s our job to “do the worrying” so to speak. Not that worry is a productive pursuit, but I think you get what I mean. Ideally, kids should be allowed to be kids, and not have to be burdened with adult concerns.
But truthfulness and honesty are also important. The world has changed, and that’s going to have a big impact on their kids. That news will be better coming from their parents than from some other source.
And again, I cringe a little at something I wrote in this scene. They keep saying that Austen won’t understand. But that’s not true. If he’s anything like my son was at that age, he’s a smart kid. Now Austen may not have the emotional skills to process and deal with this information in the same way neurotypical people might, but it wouldn’t be a lack of understanding.
Of course, as we see when the family enter the promenade, there are plenty of typical adults on this ship who also lack the emotional maturity to react well to this situation.
Haylee and Ronald’s concern about rioting shows that sometimes, in these situations, it’s our fellow human beings who can be just as much of a threat as the monsters. Sometimes more so. There are no aliens here on the ship, but there are a lot of desperate scared people. The family are prepared to hide in their cabin if things turn ugly.
Dalia Spring asks for Captain Miller to come and see her. And this really shows her arrogance, that she expects the captain of the ship to come to her. We won’t know until book 2 exactly why that is. It’s more than just her sense of self-importance. We’re setting things up for a long-term arc here. We do that a lot in this book. Although in this case, I wonder if I gave a bit too little regarding Dalia Spring in the first book.
Haylee comes to the realisation that she’s an out of work astro engineer. Her skills could be useful here. If they aren’t able to return to earth, then the ship can’t get any replacement crew. It may be useful for them to have someone like her around. Haylee is the first passenger to voluntarily think about contributing something to the running of the ship. Others will follow as time goes on, but she’s the first. I think the fact that she recently lost her job, so she’s already got a job-hunting mindset helps her along a bit with that. But over time, most people will wrestle with the fact that they can’t just be passengers forever.
Maya invites Braxton to lunch. She’s got a plan. I like how I have Braxton describe Jewel of The Stars as a bloated whale with no teeth. I think that’s quite fitting.
As someone who worked on a military ship, Braxton is much more comfortable in the crew mess than the restaurants. This is his place. This is where he belongs.
Captain Miller is already a bit cold toward Braxton before the conflict between them really gets going.
They have a discussion about risk. Both of these men are used to assessing risks. But Miller’s line of what constitutes a necessary or acceptable risk is in a very different place to Braxton’s line. This is logical given their respective positions. Military people put their lives on the line in the name of duty. Cruise ship captains are tasked with their passengers’ safety. There’s so much less to be gained by taking risks. It’s not worth putting people in harm’s way just for the sake of their entertainment. Whereas military people willingly put themselves in harm’s way for the sake of protecting others. There’s much more to be gained. More reason to risk.
Miller’s challenge is to re-adjust his thinking. His situation is becoming more like Braxton’s than it has been before.
This brings me back to that decision the captain made on my first cruise to cancel our shore excursion to the island of Mare because of the weather. The waves would have made it very unsafe for the tenders to take us to the island. There was no reason to risk that just so we could spend a few hours on the beach. So he made that call. There was so little to lose.
But Miller is now facing a situation where he may have to put the passengers in harm’s way temporarily, in order to secure their ongoing safety in the future. It’s a very different type of proposition. The kind of call he’s never had to make before. And as a naturally risk-averse person, this is a very difficult mental journey for him to make.
He sees the rule book that says, “do not put passengers in harm’s way”. This statement is sacred to him. Almost like a doctor’s Hippocratic oath. But the rule book was never written for a situation like this.
Miller definitely has a point. He’s actually very similar to me. I’m a cautious follow-the-rules kind of guy. I like to spend a lot of time thinking things through before I act. But he’s too inflexible for this extreme situation.
Braxton, on the other hand, is a little bit too much of a loose cannon. He has to remember that this isn’t a military ship. It’s a flying hotel full of tourists. I think what makes this argument between them work is that they both make valid points. Both are somewhat right and both a somewhat wrong.
We also see in this scene that Maya has set them both up to have lunch together so they can hash out their differences. Sadly, her plan backfires and things between the two men only intensify.
Braxton’s next step is to get rid of Miller. He may be a good cruise ship captain, but he’s not cut out for this situation. He wants Maya to take over. She’s the captain they need. Maya may be much closer to Braxton’s opinion in regards to his plan to get weapons from the derelict warship, but she’s loyal to Miller and doesn’t take well to Braxton’s suggestion.
It soon becomes apparent that the aliens are blocking their path out of earth-controlled space. They can’t slip quietly by as Miller had hoped. Braxton’s plan may be their only option. And Miller is big enough to swallow his pride and admit that. The debate is now moot.
But Les is soon faced with another dilemma. He’s hesitant to risk their chief engineer on this mission to dismantle the weapon on the USS Boston. But Haylee has already volunteered. She’s the perfect person for this job. But sending a passenger into harm’s way like this goes against everything Les believes in. Ultimately, He makes the only choice he can – because he knows there is no choice. It’s obvious. He was always going to make this choice, but he had to wrestle awhile to get there. And that’s me all over. I really like this scene, possibly because it comes from such a deep personal place within me.
A couple of times in this book, I’ve mentioned characters granting access to certain content to character’s eye lenses. In this world, we don’t use holograms, like in a lot of science fiction. Everyone in this society wears contact lenses, not to correct their vision, but to display augmented reality user interfaces. That’s how people interact with technology. They wear a wrist band which houses all the computing power, and the eye lenses to display information to the user. When people are sitting around a table, all looking at an image projected above it, it’s their individual eye lenses that are all projecting the same image. A person can choose to share content with other people. They can do this explicitly, like sharing something on social media, or they can just set it so that anybody who enters the room will see that image.
And while we’re talking technology, I wanted to have teleporters in the Jewel of The Stars universe, but I wanted to limit the way they work. In Star Trek, you can just beam down to a planet with no receiving station or transporter pad at the other end. And then beam back up again. There’s nothing down on the planet to disassemble their molecules and convert them into energy for transfer.
In my universe, it doesn’t work that way. You have to have a teleport chamber at both ends. This felt a little more realistic to me.
So, after attending a briefing, Haylee prepares to leave for the mission. Ronald is having a really hard time with this. Often in stories, we see the husband going off into a dangerous situation while the wife and kids remain, hoping he’ll be okay. And that must be really hard. To know that someone you love might not come back. In this situation, it’s flipped. We’ve got the husband having to wait to see if his wife will return from a dangerous situation.
It may potentially be harder for a husband to be in this situation because, as men, we tend to feel a natural desire to protect our families. And Ronald is handling it particularly badly. In the end, we see that it’s not from some desire to hold Haylee back from what she has to do. He believes in her. He supports her. He’s just really scared of losing her.
Chapter 15 is where things start to get really exciting. Our heroes board the derelict USS Boston and have to recover the cannon, but they quickly discover one of the aliens has remained on the ship. Braxton is going to have to deal with it, while the security guards protect the engineers.
Haylee has a very human moment. She’s terrified and doesn’t think she can do this. She’s not cut out for this kind of thing. And she’s right, of course. But as Jaylen points out, none of them are. Everyone on this ship is going to have to step up and tackle things they’re not cut out for in the coming days. That’s the only way they’ll survive. That’s what courage is. It’s feeling scared and doing the thing anyway. I’m really pleased with how this exchange turned out.
This is where I explain the gun technology in my world. Humans in the Jewel of The Stars universe don’t have lasers, or energy weapons like in Star Trek. They still use projectile weapons. But a gun can be a very dangerous thing on a spaceship. You don’t want a bullet to breach the hull and expose the ship to vacuum. So, I introduced the idea of “spaceys”. Special bullets that can pass through flesh but are designed to deform when coming in contact with a bulkhead. They have less stopping power than terrestrial bullets, but they won’t blow a hole in the side of the ship. I took a little inspiration here from Babylon 5, where the weapons, called PPGs, shoot little pellets of heated plasma. Similarly, they are effective against people but won’t breach the hull. We will introduce energy weapons through the course of the series. Other species will have different types of weapons.
In Braxton’s case, this is a disadvantage. The derelict ship is already exposed to hard vacuum anyway, and as he’ll soon discover, the alien he’ll be facing is pretty tough. Spaceys are not gonna do a lot against its hide.
As I was writing the scenes between Braxton and the alien, I challenged myself to use more of the senses in my descriptions. I wanted to have a specific scent that indicated the alien was nearby. Kind of like the ripples in the water glass in Jurassic Park that let you know the T-Rex was about to show up. Just something to raise the tension a little. I started writing this and then realised, hold on, Braxton is wearing a spacesuit. He can’t smell anything out there.
That’s when I came upon what I think was an ever better idea.
When a Dracnor is using their telepathic abilities, entering a human’s mind, the human smells something akin to cinnamon. It’s not technically a smell. There are no particulates in the air entering the nose. It’s mental. It’s the brain’s reaction to the alien presence. I really like this idea.
There’s an amusing little moment when Haylee realises that the cannon she designed was not installed correctly, according to her specifications. I’m not an engineer, but I’ve worked with them for many years. This is a thing I’ve noticed sometimes happens. An engineer will express some friendly frustration when their work is not implemented the way they intended. Maybe there’s a reason why the theory wasn’t going to work in practice, or maybe they just didn’t follow instructions properly. This also adds to the tension. It’s going to take longer than expected to dismantle the weapon.
I had a lot of fun designing the alien. I drew a little sketch on a piece of paper of how I wanted it to look. I’m no artist but it got the job done. You can still find this sketch on Pinterest if you look up Adam David Collings.
I wanted to create an alien that was scary, that had aspects of a monster. Sharp claws, elongated head. Big compound eyes. But I also wanted it to be believable as an advanced technological race.
I gave the alien two sets of arms. One with sharp spikes at the end which make it very dangerous in combat. The other with human-like hands for manipulation objects. And these things stand 3 metres tall. I would not want to meet one in a dark alley. It would be pretty terrifying.
The other scary thing about the alien is how it gets inside your head. It puts images in your mind. Images that will terrify you or make you feel inadequate and worthless. It attacks Braxton at the core of his confidence – the loss of his military career. This takes what is essentially an action moment – almost a horror moment, and makes it also a character moment. Braxton’s biggest weakness is all the insecure feelings he’s struggled with since being unfairly dismissed from the service. We’ll learn more about the reasons for this in a later book.
I put a fair bit of work into designing internal conflict and character arcs in this book.
Haylee is getting a lot of pressure put on her. Pressure to get the job done quickly. Constant reminders that the fate of the entire crew are on her hands. I don’t know about you, but I find this kind of pressure crippling. When a boss puts time pressure on me, I find it very detrimental. I clam up and can’t work. I haven’t been in a situation like that for a long time, but this scene allowed me to express a little bit of that frustration through Haylee.
You’ll notice that at this point in the book, scenes are becoming much shorter. I’m cutting between points of view rapidly. This is a trick I learned from the author Frank Peretti. I noticed he did the same things in his novels during climactic action scenes at the end. As a reader, I found this very effective, so it’s something I learned to replicate in my own writing.
Braxton manages to take out the alien using a gun with terrestrial rounds. They breach the creature’s visor. It seems to be dead. Of course, in horror movies, the monster always returns at the end, right?
We get a little more character growth for Captain Miller. He still wants everything done by the book. He does have a point when he says the aliens won’t have to kill them if their own shoddy work kills them first, but ultimately, they’re so far outside what is normal – there is no book. With another alien ship headed their way, Miller realises he needs to stop obsessing over the rules and just trust Sarah to do her job.
We now move into the next phase of action scenes. Braxton is going to try to get to the fighter bay, take a ship, and intercept the alien vessel to buy Haylee and Sarah some more time.
I mentioned before that in the world of my story, they don’t have hand lasers, but the fighter does have a high powered laser which comes in handy cutting a hole in the hull for them to extract the cannon’s reactor.
The cinnamon thing becomes really effective when Haylee and the others are on their way back to meet the shuttle when she gets a whiff of it. She just thinks it’s strange. It means nothing to her. But we know it means, and the implication is terrifying.
In hindsight, I could have done more to explain how the alien is still alive. How it can it function without its visor. I do go into some details about this in subsequent books. The characters themselves don’t know the answer yet. But by not explaining much here, I think it makes it look, to some readers, like I haven’t thought things through and don’t have any decent explanations. But no art is perfect. I just hope it’s not too much of a stumbling block to people’s enjoyment of the book and their desire to read on in the series.
Haylee gets an awesome moment here. Kind of an 80s action movie moment when she declares she’s not just some helpless prey. She’s a mother, and kicks the alien in the head. The way I see it, there is nothing scarier, or more dangerous, than a mum protecting her babies.
As the battle progresses, Maaka is killed by the alien, and Haylee is critically wounded as it drives its claw into her torso.
She’s rushed to sickbay for surgery. It won’t be easy to save her. But Sarah needs her input to install the canon which will delay the surgery. It’s a difficult dilemma for Les and Rashona.
When Braxton fires a torpedo at the alien ship, he uses the phrase “fish in the water”. I believe this is a naval term I picked up somewhere, meaning there is a torpedo in the water. I think I may have got it from an old Sierra Adventure game called Codename: Iceman. That’s the thing when you’re a writer, you pick up these little tidbits through your life and store them away, never knowing when you might end up using them.
I’m sure I’ve got a lot of military stuff wrong in these books, but I once had a former military person ask me if I had served myself. I haven’t, but I used some terminology here and there, like “rack” for bed. Again, just little things I’ve picked up from movies and books.
There’s a scene where Haylee has given Sarah all the information she can, and Rashona is about to operate. Haylee is mentally saying her final goodbye to Ronald and then relaxes into her fate and fades away.
Originally, I wrote this as Haylee’s death scene. Yep. I actually killed Haylee in the first draft. I felt it was a fitting sacrifice as she gave her life to save the ship.
My editor wasn’t keen on this. She suggested it would be better to kill a redshirt here, rather than a main character the readers had become invested in.
As I thought this over, something clicked in my head. I had an idea that was much better than killing Haylee. She would survive the surgery but be in a coma, and that coma could last for multiple episodes. It would be an ongoing plot element. Readers would be waiting eagerly to see if she would eventually pull through.
This then led me to realise how I would use this in the season finale, book 6. I had big exciting plans for Haylee, plans that would be so much more satisfying than her death in book 1.
I didn’t actually change her death scene, it is just re-interpreted as we learn later that she is alive but in a coma.
As for the redshirt, I killed a security officer. But I didn’t want it to be a dismissive, unimportant death. Star Trek treats redshirt deaths terribly. Nobody cares about them. Nobody mourns them. It will be different here. The death of this redshirt will be felt as the series progresses in future books.
Captain Miller’s character arc comes to its climax and conclusion when they are face to face with the alien ship. The weapon is ready but not shielded. He had to take a massive risk. One that even Sarah and Maya are hesitant about. But if they don’t try, they’re dead anyway. “I’ve played it safe long enough, Maya. I’m not going to keep these passengers safe playing by the book. We either succeed or we die. But either way, it happens now.
This is the growth that Miller has had to achieve in order to win. In order to save his people.
That’s the intertwining of internal conflict and external conflict between character arc and plot.
Both Braxton and Miller feel some blame for what happened to Haylee. Braxton failed to kill the alien, and Miller allowed Sarah to delay Haylee’s surgery. I deliberately left it unknown as to whether things might have gone better for Haylee without the delay. They’ll never know. And sadly, that not knowing will gnaw at Miller for a long time.
Miller and Braxton have a quiet scene together where they clear the air between them. They’re both different people, and they’ve both come to a respect for each other, and their points of view. They’ve managed to meet in the middle. Miller now uses Braxton’s name, and Braxton vows to follow Miller anywhere. I really like this scene.
But Miller is still unsure about the future. That’s where Rashona comes in. I designed her to be not only a friend, but something of a conscience for Miller. A little like Guinan and Picard in Star Trek, or Shepherd and Mal in Firefly. Miller doesn’t share Rashona’s religious beliefs, but he has a lot of respect for her perspective.
He feels they are orphans. He’s not sure they can survive out there in the unknown, in the long-term. Rashona suggests they’re not orphans; they’re the last remnant of earth. They’re the ones who will survive and ensure that the human race is not forgotten.
And so, with renewed optimism, Miller gives the order to go and see what they can find out there.
That last line really sets up the series. They’re not just survivors, they’re explorers. There are countless strange new worlds out there for them to discover. Wonders and allies just waiting to be found.
And we will get to experience those adventures in future books.
That’s what a pilot episode should do, tell its own story, but set thing up for a larger story, and a whole collection of stories.
I hope you’ve enjoy this behind-the-scenes look at the making of Jewel of The Stars book 1. If there’s enough interest, I might do some commentaries for other books.
But for now, have a great day
Live long and prosper.
Make it so
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