While I relax (!) in New York City for the week, I’m leaving you in the capable hands of MARIAN ALLEN. Thanks to Marian for visiting!

When One Genre Just Isn’t Enough

I’ve never made a secret out of the fact that FORCE OF HABIT began life as a Star Trek (the original show) spoof with a side order of THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER.

Beginning with the writer’s magic words, I asked myself WHAT IF some of the crew beamed down to an alien planet — I called it Llannonn — for shore leave and a crewmember switched clothes with a native (humanoid, of course) and was kidnapped in that person’s place? The expendability of crewmembers was a running joke among Star Trek fans, but this was supposed to be funny, so there would have to be pressure applied somewhere to make her (of course her) retrieval necessary.

Get the local police involved. Police on an alien planet, with an alien justice system.

Sufficiently involved for a short story.

When I decided to turn it from a piece of short fan fiction into an original novel, characters morphed from Star Trek caricatures into themselves and the story line sprouted subplots like a seed potato sprouts … well … sprouts.

If it were a Star Trek novel, I reasoned, the Klingons would get into the act, since the Klingons were the stock villains in the original show. So I had a gangster and his henchmen. They were from the planet Stokk. Yes. Stokk villains. No, I have no shame.

I brought the local police into the story right at the beginning, turning Pel Darzin from a bit character into a lead.

I’ve since given him a story of his own, co-starring in “By the Book”, a short story I wrote to help promote FORCE OF HABIT. It’s free at Smashwords. I also ran a contest for the right to name a character in that story, and the winner, Holly Jahangiri, ended up as the other co-star. She and Darzin are appearing again together in a story I’m currently working on, “Surviving the Book”.  

But I digress.

I had written several Star Trek spoofs set on Llannonn, in which I explored various areas of the planet, so I used the culture I had developed in those to enrich the action in my novel. (I may, if nobody stops me, turn those stories into novels, too.)

As you see, I didn’t exactly intend to write a cross-genre novel. That’s just the way the story grew. Organic. Kind of like the stuff on the floor of the stable is organic.

Or, as they say on Llannonn, “You can herd pratties or you can have clean boots, but you can’t do both.” {The Real Me notes: I LOVE that line!}

Marian Allen was born in Louisville, Kentucky and now lives in rural Indiana. For as long as she can remember, she has loved telling and being told stories. She writes science fiction, fantasy, mystery, humor, horror, mainstream, and anything else she can wrestle into fixed form.

Allen has had stories in on-line and print publications, on coffee cans and the wall of an Indian restaurant in Louisville, Kentucky.

She is a member of the Southern Indiana Writers Group.

Allen is active in the Friends of Harrison County Library, Woman’s Literary Club of Corydon and Community Unity, which promotes diversity appreciation and non-violent problem solving.

She posts at the group blog Fatal Foodies on Tuesdays and monthly on The Write Type, That Book Place and Echelon Exploration.

Book Blurb: The planet Llannonn is known for its courtesy, but when rebellious space academy professor Bel Schuster goes off-limits during shore leave she uncovers the iron fist inside that velvet glove.

FORCE OF HABIT , $0.99:

http://tinyurl.com/ma-foh-Kindle

http://tinyurl.com/ma-foh-Smash

“By the Book” is free:

http://tinyurl.com/ma-btb-Kindle

http://tinyurl.com/ma-btb-Smash