Conversation with Naiche
Hello everyone! Thanks to Dr. Rosemarie Herbert for hosting me on her lovely blog for the day. I’m Felicia Watson, author of the Lovelace Series, a sci-fi adventure set in the 31st Century. Book One is We Have Met the Enemy and Book Two is the just released Spooky Action at a Distance. In Spooky Action we find the main character of the series, Lt. Naiche Decker, aboard the Uniterrae Defense Corps starship Lovelace, the first real home she’s had since she left her Chiricahua Apache community at age seventeen. With the recent war behind her, she’s looking forward to life as an explorer rather than a soldier. But her latest adventure – exploring a quantum entanglement – proves to be her most dangerous mission yet.
I’ve decided with two books published and a third underway, it’s finally time to sit down and have a heart-to heart with my Main Character. You folks get to listen in. Say hello, Naiche.
Naiche: Hello. I’d say it’s good to meet you, Felicia, but you’re the one who killed off my mother and grandfather, pulled me away from my people, and put me in a brutal war with an alien race. Where I was forced to kill five friends.
Felicia: Uh, yeah, that’s one way to look at it. On the upside, I gave you an interesting life! And also gave you a wonderful CO, Conroy Kennedy, and a Search and Rescue dog, Kayatennae, by your side.
Naiche: Yes, Con is the best friend I’ve ever had and Kay is the greatest dog in the galaxy – but it seems to me you could have given me those minus all the heartache and mayhem.
Felicia: Only if I was writing a picture book for 4-year-olds. And hey, I did show some mercy. I didn’t give you your father’s nose – that has to count for something.
Naiche: Oh, yeah, that makes up for being put through a meat grinder of a life.
Felicia: In my defense, that’s my job. Moving right along, let’s talk about Spooky Action, where we find that after helping the UDC win the war, you’re going to have a fabulous adventure in deep space. It involves the coolest ship the UDC has ever designed. It’s fast, sleek, and the navigation control actually links directly into the pilot’s brain. Since you’re one of the best pilots in the Corps, I know you’re just itching to get your hands on a ship like that – aren’t you?
Naiche: The ship sounds awesome but what do you mean “fabulous adventure”? Doesn’t it say up there that this is my most dangerous mission yet?
Felicia: You can see that?? Whoops! Anyway, on this mission you’re also going to run into an old friend of yours – Talako Jacoway.
Naiche: Friend?! That jackass? Granted, he sure is good-looking – but so conceited.
Felicia: He’s not really conceited, just…quite confident. And that comes with the territory. Pilots do have a tendency to be a little over-confident. Don’t they?
Naiche: What makes you say that?
Felicia: Oh, no reason. As for Tal, I think ‘jackass’ is pretty harsh. Isn’t it possible that you’ve misjudged him? Like you did with your father?
Naiche: Nah, I learned my lesson there. I know when I’m being unfair to people, now.
Felicia: I’ll guess we’ll see about that.
Naiche: Do you know something I don’t?
Felicia: Always. What part of “omniscient narrator” don’t you understand?
Naiche: If you’re waiting for me to laugh – don’t. How is it you developed me and I’m still funnier that you?
Felicia: I give you all my best lines.
Naiche: You really didn’t save anything for yourself today…. Tell me, what else happens in this book? What is a quantum entanglement, exactly?
Felicia: It’s a stellar phenomenon where the space-time field is in constant flux.
Naiche: How the hell do you navigate through something like that?
Felicia: Good question. One that has stumped the best minds in the UDC – and that’s why there are two ships stuck there, needing rescue. By the Lovelace, specifically. Oh, did I mention that the entanglement is collapsing and if you folks don’t find a way to rescue the 80 people trapped there, they’ll be lost forever? And you have to team up with your nemesis, Jacoway, to do it.
Naiche: Can I read your bio again? Are you sure you’re an author and not a sadist?
Felicia: When it comes to our characters, there’s not much difference.
Naiche: What else happens to me? Alien encounters? Death-defying feats of bravery? Deep emotional connections? Do I get lucky?
Felicia: Yes, yes, yes, and – yes and no.
Naiche: What does that mean?
Felicia: I guess you’ll have to read Spooky Action at a Distance to find out. I hope you’ll all do the same! Good-bye from me and Naiche. And many many thanks to Rosemarie for hosting us here.
I wanted this to be new and innovative, but in the end I actually felt disappointed. I’ve read a similar novel/memoir in the past that still stuck with me. What really frustrated me about this was that it had a ‘fearless new talent’ but the writing itself wasn’t that amazing. It seemed to reply on shock factor, and speed, in order to keep the reader interested.
This is a rich novel that is intended to be confronting and powerful, but is instead I found it off putting. It seemed like a train wreck from the start, and yet I kept hoping for a satisfactory conclusion. Instead what I read made me feel irritated and grossed out. Also there were parts (such as Marco’s ?affair? with the butcher) that I didn’t understand the importance of. This is literature, not light reading. It demands attention and thinking that I just didn’t have the space to give.
The Optimist is a play. So why did it become an audio book? Two reasons. The first has to do with my education after I became a history professor. With a mother and uncle both fired from their jobs for being Communists, I’d already had a first-hand education in how the world works. Although I didn’t admit it to myself at the time, perhaps I wanted to hide in the educational ivory tower, away from the unpredictable real world. I really, really got that wrong.
The Optimist becoming an audio book is the logical end of this story. Since this is most assuredly one of those times when truth is stranger than fiction, doing a factual article for some magazine or journal looked like a sure way to pile up rejection notices. Actually one playhouse turned down The Optimist because an artistic director thought the Henry VIII/Anne Boleyn reappearance was unbelievable. With the help of the professional, talented actors who portray these people, my hope is listeners will find The Optimist both convincing and enjoyable.
This memoir almost moved me to tears with the hopelessness and frustration that leaked out of its pages. How could no-one help Lucia when she was obviously in so much pain? Surely bleeding from the vagina should always be treated as serious. I guess that this was some years ago, when endometriosis and Crohn’s Disease were poorly understood, and even more poorly treated.
This book left me with an incredibly bad mouth feel. I felt violated and unsatisfied, and frankly a bit offended! This is a vague retelling of Macbeth, but Macbeth was time-appropriate, and Shakespeare! Death and madness are no longer ‘normal’ (and therapy will help with avoiding both of those things).
This has what could be called a ‘slow burn’. There’s no real action, and no real climax to it. There are hints at the Orzone behind the Emperor Mage but that’s about it. It’s like the first Harry Potter books where the focus was on learning, and let’s face it, those books were my favorites for that reason!
I’m not really sure how old these kids are. Teenagers? I thought that I read somewhere that they are in junior high, but they certainly seem to have a lot of freedom in school for that. I’m a great believer in the power of education, and they don’t seem to spend much time at school! The only class they seem to do is art, and while I think it’s really important for expression, it’s not the only way to express yourself.