SYNOPSIS
-ATTENTION-
The Hunter Class Spacecraft designated 'The Amberjack' disappeared during a routine mission to Seek, Locate and Destroy the enemy Machine Mind contingent known as ‘The Ochre’. Conclusion: It was either destroyed by the Ochre or went rogue for reasons unknown. If sighted, approach with extreme caution.
On the planet Borealis, a violent revolution forces Samantha Marriot and her parents to flee their home for the relative safety of ‘The Rainbow Islands’. Once there, Sam discovers a secret her father has been keeping from her all her life, a secret that will change everything.
Meanwhile, The Machine Mind Hierarchy of Earth dispatches a ship to rid themselves of the planet’s troublesome human population. The only hope of a defence lies with a damaged binary Hunter unit that has long since abandoned both its programming and weaponry.
In order for the unit to succeed it must call upon the aid of an ancient enemy, and prove, once and for all, that it is a Hunter no more.
BOOK LINKS
AUTHOR INFORMATION & LINKS
G.D. Tinnams has worked as a barman, a call center operator, an IT support analyst, and a software tester. But during all this time he was also an insatiable reader of science fiction and fantasy books like Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising Sequence, Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game, Robert Charles Wilson's Blind Lake and Greg Egan's Permutation City. He is very fond of weird, mind-bending stories and decided quite early on to try writing some. ‘Surface Tension’ is his second novel.
WHO AM I?
A Comment on Characterisation
First of all, and what many people have noted, I tend to give my characters ‘normal’ names such as Roger, Keith, Anna, Sam, Alicia. This was a conscious choice because when I’ve read books in the past I find it hard to get my head around weird alien names and lose track of who is who. I didn’t want my readers to have the same problem so I’d just rather keep it simple and direct. Even so a few slightly different names did creep in, like Kristof and Skylar. Again not alien names, but just a little unusual. I probably couldn’t walk down the street and meet a Kristof or Skylar, but I could probably bump into a Keith.
Names notwithstanding, once a character has a name, what do you do with them? Well in any story you have a protagonist, a character whose experiences the story is built around. Sometimes but not all the time you have an antagonist in direct opposition to the protagonist. Their conflict creates the story. Actually it’s not quite that simple, but that is a starting point. In my novels I tend to have more than one protagonist, allowing multiple points of view and multiple antagonists as well. It mixes things up more, and sometimes a protagonist can change roles and so can the antagonist. Their roles are not set, but are dictated by how each character progresses in the story.
It’s never as cut and dried as good versus evil. Good people sometimes do bad things and bad people do good things. Characters are not consistent, and may make a good decision one day and a bad the next, even when confronted with the same circumstances. Why? Is this bad writing? No, in real life people are equally inconsistent, I’m inconsistent. We live, we change, we make mistakes and sometimes we don’t. Characters follow suit.
I also believe that characters shouldn’t necessarily get on, even if they are on the same side, they have different interpretations of what that side is. For instance, the characters Keith and Roger in ‘Hunter No More’ actively despise each other. Keith sees Roger as small minded, Roger sees Keith as alien and arrogant. But that doesn’t mean they can’t work together, it doesn’t mean they can’t love the same people. But they are at odds, and that conflict helps to define who they are and make them more interesting as people. If they liked each other, and did everything without argument, that would make them the same person. Superficially the description would be different, but the characters would be duplicates of each other. People are all unique and different and no-one is exactly the same. In life we are all the stars of own shows, for the characters it’s no different. Even a minor character doesn’t know they are a minor character. In their own life they are the protagonist and they have to be written that way.
So we have names, conflict, descriptions.
Someone is tall, someone is fat, someone is a man, someone is a woman. Gender stereotypes: the man should be strong, the woman should be weak. That is rubbish, a woman can be stronger than a man, both physically and mentally. A woman shows more emotion than a man? Maybe in feature films, but in a story we are interested in the inner voice. A man and woman can be equally afraid, equally grief-stricken, equally brave, and equally hysterical. Characters react and feel, man or woman, it shouldn’t matter. I’m not saying they should be written the same, but a writer should avoid being influenced by preconceptions about gender as much as possible. Why, as much as possible? Because we are all influenced by our upbringing, and every independent thought is tinged by that.
I have no doubt that some stereotypes creep into my writing, but the trick is to avoid those stereotypes as much as you possibly can.
Finally it’s all about the layers; layers of behaviour, layers of reaction, layers of internal and external argument, layers of action. After injecting a character with enough layers, plot no longer dictates their actions, rather their actions dictate the plot. Keith isn’t going to say to Kristof, let’s blow up this place and go home. It’s not in his character. So plot hinges on how a character would act, and you can’t just throw in plot twists which don’t fit with a character’s actions. You have to write the character’s actions based on their developed traits and let the story play out as honestly as possible. That’s when it gets interesting for a writer, really interesting, because as you’re writing you don’t know exactly what is going to happen next.
Coffee Shop In An Alternate Universe
This little story was written as a half hour challenge during a meeting of my writer's group. The brief was simple enough, 'coffee shop in an alternate universe'. Below is what I scrambled to write in that half hour. It was a fun experience that I hope you will enjoy reading.
Coffee Shop in an Alternate Universe
It was the sun on his eyes that brought James out of a dream that was already escaping his grasp. Something about a forest of green sun dappled leaves and overpowering fragrance. He awoke with a sneeze.
Recovering himself, he felt warm hard concrete against his back. Turning his head he made out the edge of double yellow lines. He was lying the road. What? He rolled to his feet, dodging over to the pavement in order to avoid whatever cars or traffic that was coming his way. It took him only a moment to realise that there was none. All the cars he could see - the range rovers, the aston martin, the fiesta – all were still, inert, but not parked, just stopped, a queue of traffic with no drivers and no humming engines.
This was London, he knew it was London, but it was so quiet, so dead. He looked up at the buildings rising overhead, shielding his eyes from the sun. Buildings that literally scraped the sky and that should have been full of commerce and activity. He saw no movement and somehow knew they were just as empty as the street he stood upon. He was alone.
Turning around he saw his favourite Starbucks waiting for him. The same Starbucks he spent every lunchtime with a coffee and a book listening to jazz. Brushing down his dishevelled suit, he walked over to it and pushed through the door. The cold breeze of the air conditioning greeted him and then something else, someone else.
“Hello James.”
It was Tracey, his normal server, dressed in her starbucks uniform, she appeared to be waiting for him.
“Tracey?” he mumbled.
“The usual?” she asked.
He strode up to the counter. “The usual?” He rapidly gestured outside, “What’s happened?”
She followed his gaze, her expression more tired than usual. He normally saw her with a smile on her face, always a smile, a beautiful plastic smile for all her customers.
“This is where I come to be by myself,” Tracey explained. “You followed me here.”
James blinked and opened his mouth. “I didn’t follow you. I always come here.”
She sighed. “Not here, here,” she gestured with a sweep of her hand. “Here. A sidestep away. I’m on my break.”
“Break?” He found it hard to understand the ramifications.
“Now that you are here,” she pulled out a cup. “The usual?”
James shook his head and rubbed a chin that was no longer as clean shaven as he would have liked. “This doesn’t make sense.”
“Just sit down,” Tracey said. “I’ll be with you in a minute.”
Slowly he felt his limbs respond and took a window seat looking out onto a beautiful summer’s day in the centre of the city of London. Beautiful, but so empty. He loosened his tie and Tracey delivered his Moche.
“You’re the first to follow me here, James, the first ever. How did you do it?”
He heard jazz and blinked rapidly as she mouthed more words he couldn’t hear.
“Did you just turn that on?” he asked.
She replied again with words he couldn’t hear. The jazz was getting louder. It was playing a horn solo he had heard so many times before.
“Don’t go back yet!” She cut in abruptly.
“What is this?” He asked, scrambling from his seat and knocking his coffee cup flying with a stray hand. The cup flew through the air and then fell in vivid slow motion, the brown liquid spilling upward. Then it smashed, the whole episode over in an instant.
“Calm down, James,” Tracey said. “Only a few people can do what we can do. Just a very few. I never thought I would meet another.”
“Do what?” he asked. “What?” Suddenly it was very hot.
“Travel between,” she whispered. “Distant and close at the same time.”
“This doesn’t make any sense,” he mumbled.
Tracey laughed. “I’m not along anymore.” She stared at him, studying his grey suit and his even greyer hair. “Oh...” Then she was gone.
He blinked, she was gone and he was alone in an empty Starbucks, in what appeared to be an empty London. An empty world? He stood up and wiped the sweat from his brow. He had to go outside and find out.
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