Nighthawks at the Mission.
The Oberon. Off-World. Thousands of settlers from America have come to live in this mysterious land accessed only by an energy portal in the South Pacific. The settlers are there to mine orichalcum- a mineral that can give even the casual user magical powers - and to reap the strange high tech salvage that litters the dead cities of an extinct human civilization.
In today's universe, it's the last place a settler from the USA can find the old American dream alive and well.
Sarah Orange is a smart girl from Orange County, California who has a rich, cheating boyfriend named Tyler. When Tyler’s twin brother Jaime reveals Tyler is cheating on Sarah, Sarah decides that she’s got nothing left for her in So-Cal. Facing a futureless existence and betrayed by her long-time boyfriend, Sarah Orange leaves the Earth.
Getting an interview with an exploitative corporation that runs the human colonies, the Off-World Network, Sarah journeys through a massive energy portal discovered in the South Pacific.
Meeting Guy Farson, a young salvager, on the trip to The Oberon, Sarah gets the idea of joining up with the many different co-ops who are doing all the dangerous salvage jobs in the abandoned cities that are crawling with the undead remnants of what is called the Antediluvian civilization.
Having gathered up a good haul of cash from their salvaging, Sarah and the others think about heading to a southern Oberon city in order to get away from the terrors at their own Mission.
Sarah, Treena and Guy flee south to Guy’s vacation home on the Quadling Sea. Ambushed by the gang again at an ancient palace turned into a resort, Sarah convinces her friends to hunt the gang down themselves.
Ambushing the gang at McRoss Research Station, Guy, Sarah and Treena manage to kill most of the gang members except for the leader, Charles Mathias and his Ni-Perchta girlfriend, nicknamed Jenny Petty.
Sarah’s co-op is betrayed by Tek to the Mathias-Petty gang, a group of humans and Ni-Perchta robbers, Mathias arrives later with a small army of Ni-Perchta. Sarah and Mathias battle during a “flashstorm”, or energy storm in one of the dead cities. Mathias is defeated by Sarah, who challenges him to a Ni-Perchta ordained duel. causing what looks to be the death of Guy Farson and Treena Page.
Due to an ancient security system in the city, Sarah is teleported and dumped a hundred miles away into a polluted sea far from civilization. Rescued by a strange old man, John Hamilton, Sarah manages to return to the Mission with the help of her co-worker, Saki Tetsuhara and kills Tek, the Ni-Perchta who had betrayed the group.
Sarah does have a run with the gang one more time, with the stunning revelation that Sarah’s sister is alive and behind the gang’s increasing attacks on the settlers in a war against colonization.
Alone now and in a customer service job at the colony, Sarah falls in with Guy Farson’s co-op (the Page sisters and Tek, a non-human Oberon native or “Ni-Perchta”) which reveals itself to be an illegal operation that does salvaging without a license and in the middle of the night (a term they call “Nighthawking”)
Sarah is confronted by Treena’s sister Winniefreddie who believes that Sarah, being the only other survivor, betrayed the co-op. Forced into a magical duel with Winniefreddie based on Ni-Perchta customs, Sarah kills Winniefreddie and is ruined by guilt.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY :
Forbes West was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois and moved out to the west coast in 1995, graduating from Los Alamitos High School. Considering Seal Beach his adopted hometown, Forbes loves to spend his free time discussing politics and watching classic and contemporary films.
He graduated with a Master's Degree in Political Science from California State University, Long Beach.
Forbes West lives with his wife Junko in San Francisco, CA and owns a home in Ojima, Japan- a village five hours south of Tokyo by car that is in the foothills of Mt. Fuji.
He a cigar and wine aficionado with a love for sports cars and classic films.
Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.-Ernest Hemingway.
Drop it!- Robocop.
IN FIVE BULLETED SELLING POINTS, WHAT DISTINGUISES YOUR BOOK FROM THE COMPETITION?
1. Nighthawks at the Mission is an epic, fantasy, sci-fi, tour-de-force. It is also a slightly demented, scatter-brained, fragmented, meme-dropping, allusion-riddled, drug-addled, Jack Kerouac-like, stream-of-consciousness mind thumping that dares you to "get it.
2. Written in a 2nd person point of view, which people appreciate as a way of being drawn into an unusual story. It seems like just a fun ride on the surface but it creeps inside your brain with each detail and forces you to try to figure out what the author’s telling you.
3. Nighthawks is sharp and funny oozing with pop culture references and sci-fi shenaniganism. Shades of Hunter S. Thompson flirt effortlessly with undertones of Lewis Carroll.
4. This book is layered and frequently pulls from its literary and cultural history, and if you get it, than the book will provide endless enjoyment. It is a conversation by the nerds, for the nerds.
5. It playfully pokes a cheeky finger in the eye of recent Young Adult fiction by showing what would be the more realistic outcome of a teenager finding themselves put in this situation and by portraying a deeply flawed and selfish character who rather than being a clean cut hero, makes some terrible decisions, trusts some pretty shady characters while doing her best to dig herself out of the monumentally large hole she has dug for herself.
People come up to me – at bars, restaurants, half-way houses, and ask, “Forbes? That you?” After a few moments of sideways glances and awkward chatter, they will soon say to me, “Boy, Nighthawks at the Mission (available at Amazon.com now), you really set up a world there, whoa, I gotta say, you know, that world you built in that sci-fi story, yowza.” And I’ll nod and glance at my watch and exit the room quietly after making an excuse as I do not like talking to strangers.
After I’ve walked away and soon realize I left my keys in my other jacket pocket and I have to wait around an hour for my wife to come open the front door, I sometimes reflect to myself, what is world building? How does one do it without submerging the real stuff of story – the characters, the plot – and explain this new setting to the reader who doesn’t have the privilege of sitting inside my brain the entire day?
When I started writing Nighthawks at the Mission (available at Amazon.com now) I didn’t even exactly start with the story. I started by making up the actual entire world that this story would inhabit.
In sci-fi, I think it’s a must to have a world built and put together that the author is fully cognizant of. This is for science fiction writing that’s set clearly outside our contemporary and dull universe. Think of 1984 without its setting – it would just be just an odd book about Winston Smith having a bitch of a time with his job while indulging in thoughts about raping and murdering the younger office worker who he then falls in love with while under the ever watchful eye of his possibly imaginary Boss.
Anyway, the point of building a world here is to set up the “rules.” Magic or technology works like this, and not like that (not everyone has a laser gun, a few do). People talk this way (in slang or technobabble). This isn’t to limit yourself, but to know exactly what sort of world your characters are dealing with. Maybe you start to think up what characters might have in their everyday inventory – wands or sonic screwdrivers? Where do the characters live – in “Airstrip One?” And where exactly in “Airstrip One?” That green field that Winston bangs that girl in, or London with those trippy clocks? Who runs the place – Master Blaster or Aunty Entity? Do your characters eat people or snausages? You should know this before writing otherwise there’s gonna be a lot of odd re-writes later.
The point of the exercise in world building is just to know where your characters are at, to anchor them somewhat to a reality you are creating. It’s also to avoid any ass pulls later in your story just because you thought up something that really doesn’t fit.
My feeling is that the readers of a science fiction book are tourists in this new world and I as the writer am going to give them the grand tour.
When you’re showing off this world you made up for science fiction, don’t be that tour guide who keeps droning on and on about some 15th century crap no one cares about. Dribble the information out. Go back to Orwell for a moment- “It was a bright day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” It’s a subtle but major hint that the cozy, sugar-coated world you are escaping by reading is different from the world that Orwell made up. At no point does Orwell just slam you full of information. The next paragraph after that isn’t “Winston Smith woke up from his gin-induced stupor and thought of the revolution, the atomic wars that had brought about the revolution, and how his mother was eaten by rats desiring chocolate. The Outer Party he worked for was like our middle class and the Inner Party is a bunch of pigs. Oh and he was unhappy because sex was banned unless for the purpose of creating soldiers.”
Everything is dribbled out in delicate doses in 1984 just like a good tour guide who gives away a nice anecdote while passing a place or exhibit or colorful hobo soiling himself.
Anyway, long story short, don’t drown the reader with a bunch of information about your world, just leak it out, and make sure you know the environment your characters are operating in well before you set down to write.
- What is your favorite word? Respect.
- What is your least favorite word? Stupid.
Smart women. People enjoying my writing and laughing at the right parts or wanting to read more and more. Women.
People who follow trends like those fuckers who wait weeks in line for the next iPhone. People who make money just to make money and just sit on piles of cash and not do a single interesting thing with it or have any sort of life adventure or exposure to the outside world besides a safe touristy vacation (see: Zuckerberg, Mark and most of Wall Street).
- What sound or noise do you love? Delicate sound of thunder coming from the Dark Side of the Moon (50 points if you catch the full reference.)
- What sound or noise do you hate? Babies crying n’ shit.
- What is your favorite curse word? Fucktard.
- What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?
Storm chasing in tornado alley with professional meteorologists. Deep sea fishing off the Florida Keys. Either one.
- What profession would you not like to do?
I really wouldn’t want to be an orderly at some senior nursing center. People dying. Cleaning up shit and blood all the time. Bleach smell everywhere. Watching relatives that should be euthanized because they couldn’t give a flying fuck about their own older relatives.
- If heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the pearly gates?
Hemingway wanted me to tell you that he thought your writing was marginally okay. And that Grandpa’s coming by in a second to say hello. The one Grandpa. The other one is fishing and cursing at the moment. And your Grandmothers wanted to introduce themselves for the first time. And tell your cat Gump to get off my damn couch.
- What are your nicknames? What do you prefer to be called?
Forbes. Some of you may have picked up that Forbes West is a nom de however you say that, most people including my own father call me Forbes. or Forbesy. Or Flobes because of that one time some Korean owner of a internet cafe butchered my name in a hilariously accented way. There is a reason why the name Forbes is used if you catch what I’m throwing out there. Yes, its not my real name, Detective. But it works.
- What books on your shelf are begging to be read?
Frank Herbert’s Dune. Stephen King’s The Gunslinger (Plus its sequels). Nick Cole’s Wasteland Saga. Robert Hughes and his great book, The Fatal Shore. Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. Whitley Strieber and James Kunetka’s WarDay. Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom The Bell Tolls. J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Revolution at the Gates: Selected Writings by V.I. Lenin and Slavoj Zizek. Ron Paul’s The Revolution: A Manifesto. Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell.
- How often do you doodle? What do your doodles look like?
Mostly I doodle little robots that shoot fire at each other and UFOs. Odd many armed monsters with squiggly heads and teeth. Giant heads filled with teeth.
- What do you do if you can’t sleep at night? Do you count sheep? Toss and Turn? Try to get up and do something productive?
I usually just stare at the ceiling and then write down something on my iPhone’s notepad about a book or movie idea. Then there’s always the warm embrace of free internet pornography. Waking my cat up and chasing him around the room until he hides ontop of the refrigerator and won’t come down without violence.
- How many days could you last in solitary confinement? How would you do it?
I could do a month easy. I’d just live in my head and my imagination which is what I do anyway for fun and games. I’d probably would just want to get out after a month because I want to do something else and not because I couldn’t stand the lock up and the walls closing in, blah blah. I’d be alright.
- Do you save old greeting cards and letters? Throw them away?
I’m married so by law I keep them neatly stored for future non-reference and to be burned by absent minded caretakers.
- Who is the biggest pack rat you know?
I work in property management in real life and the biggest pack rat I saw was this poor 40 year old Asian guy who was renting an apartment at one of the places I managed who moved out five years later. When he was moving I saw that he saved everything from VHS tapes to boxes upon boxes of Jenga and cut out pictures of Cub Scouts from magazines and little league trophies. He didn’t have any children. There’s probably a mass grave nearby of Cub Scouts waiting undiscovered.
- When making an entrance in to a party, do you make your presence known? Do you slip in and look for someone you know? Do you sneak in quietly and find a safe spot to roost?
I always make an entrance like an asshole because I like making people laugh. I like seeing old friends so I want every first moment of a meeting with them to be special and fun. I like to mingle unless I’m a total unknown at some party where I know only the host by chance. Then I just head to the drink bar and make it fun for myself at least by getting plastered. After a while of being buzzed you always make friends somehow.
- What is your strongest sense? If you had to give one up, which would it be?
My eyes are my best sense which doesn’t really mean much since I’m legally blind. If I had to give up a sense it’d be sight. I can’t live without music and people talking; that would fuck me up more than How many times a day do you look at yourself in the mirror? Any chance there is a mirror in the general vicinity I’ll take a peak. My hair is wavy as shit and I always need to have a comb on hand because otherwise it’s just gonna become a fuckin’ afro in two minutes.
- What is the strangest thing you believed as a child?
Socialism in one country.That adults knew what the fuck they were doing at all times and that authority figures got to be authority figures because they were just so fucking smart.
- What is one guilty pleasure you enjoy too much to give up?
Sex with strangers. Cigars. I like that shit. Its a tasteful way of getting cancer.
Who performs the most random acts of kindness out of everyone you know? My wife Junko. She’ll give her last ten dollars to some street urchin if they seem the least bit hungry. She’ll put down a hundred dollar plus donation for people she barely knows without a second thought.
- How often do you read the newspaper? Which paper? Which sections?
I don’t read the newspaper anymore. If anything major happens I’ll find out. I might read the politics section of “Huffington Post” just to get pissed off for the day. I also don’t watch television that much, come to think of it. I mean, I watch TV shows and movies off of Netflix but its not exactly the most up to date material in the world now, is it?
- Which animals scare you most? Why?
Japanese Hornets that apparently are genetically engineered to instill fear into mankind. One buzzed me when I was in Japan and I wasn’t scared at first because I THOUGHT IT WAS A GODDAMN HUMMING BIRD. Go look ‘em up I’m fucking serious. Or here for fuck’s sake:
- What’s a strange occurrence you’ve experienced but have never (or rarely) shared with anyone?
About a year or two ago (I forget exactly), I, being in property management, got a frantic call from our a person co-signing an apartment home that I managed about his family. Now our community is about 296 apartment homes, so it’s basically a small town (2-4 people per apartment), just to give you an idea, and so no one really notices each other and keeps to themselves, so if something is amidst in an another apartment they won’t notice unless the proverbial bomb goes off. This co-signer was frantic, saying that he hadn’t been able to reach his father (who was in his 80s and a invalid) and his brother (in his fifties who was taking care of the father) for five days. The co-signer and I walked to the apartment as I had the key to the place and since he was only a co-signer and not a true tenant, I had to stick around when opening the place up since it wasn’t fully “his” place. I knocked on the door- no answer. I knocked again- no answer. At the moment I was thinking that maybe they had taken the old man to the hospital or something so I did the whole final knock, called out loudly “Management” and opened the door.
And well, inside was a complete and awful murder scene. Congealed blood all over the place, things knocked over. Two bodies, left for five days during a very hot and humid week, rotting inside. I couldn’t get the smell out of my mind for days afterwards and what I saw inside made me have a nervous breakdown later that night. Everything just seemed to smell like that apartment and I couldn’t get that vicious scene out of my mind for a month. I went out of my way not to go near that apartment for months. It was never fully explained to me the circumstances of what had happened, though it had been reported in the LA TIMES homicide section as a murder-suicide.
- What’s your reaction towards people who are outspoken about their beliefs? What conditions cause you to dislike or, conversely, enjoy talking with them?
Depends. I like people having a different viewpoint (sometimes a very different viewpoint, I really do like hearing what they have to say and I don’t take offense unless its some out and out Nazi bullshit but that’s really hard to hear nowadays). I don’t like people who decide its time to convert me and keep pressuring me to buy what they are selling. That I don’t care for. We can have disagreements like gentlemen or gentleladies but the moment these people start getting emotionally upset because I’m not on board I hate it. But honest to goodness intellectuals believing in radically different things than I do? I love it actually. I hate the Republican Party as an organization but to talk to a intellectual from the party or a true blue Conservative with a ideological belief system who’s respectful? I can talk to them for hours. I love it. The weirder their outspoken beliefs, as long as they aren’t getting crazy and emotional, the more enjoyment I have talking to them.
- What are the top three qualities that draw you to someone new?
A sense of humor (usually dark), someone who’s a bit of rebel in some way, and someone who does something creative in life (writing, artistry, music) and who doesn’t buy this whole go to school, get married, get a house, get retired, die scheme that’s being foisted onto a lot of people.
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