Through a Smokey Haze – Part Three

I wanted to take this space to whine.  I wanted to whine that I’m a nobody, and that people who have made a name for themselves ignore me.  Big whoop.  No one cares, and quite frankly it’s childish.  I have a problem sometimes with overly romantic daydreaming, where all of these fantastic and intelligent men and women are magically my BFF’s without any real concessions, effort, or displays of consistent intelligent interactions.  No, it’s not going to work that way.  And that’s okay.  It’s actually vital that none of this is handed to me.  It’s imperative that I have to earn what I actually am capable of.  If my efforts earn me notification and acknowledgement from those whose esteem I hold in high regard, then huzzah!  I have succeeded at that rather personal and completely tangential goal.  In the end, this act, right here, is all that truly matters.  Writing.  Creating.  Telling stories, sharing values and insights.   That’s what it’s all about.  Friendship with men and women who’ve been highly productive authors for over a decade my first five months out of the gate?  With only a single serialized short story not yet published and an inconsistent and completely undeveloped blog?  Yeaaaaahhhh…  There’s naive and then there’s whatever that was.  Wildly optimistic seems an understatement. 

However, what is not understated is that what I’m trying to do with Through a Smokey Haze.   And quite simply, it’s try to create a compelling character.   I’m coming at writing with far more enthusiasm than talent at this stage.  Dogged persistence and the ability to ‘cowboy up’ after being thrown off the writing horse are going to take me as far as I’m willing to go.  In my case, that will be pretty far.  However, between now and whatever future zenith I want for my career, I have to develop the skills that are necessary to get there.  It’s part of the reason why I continue to write in the short story format, and it is definitely the reason why I try so hard to constantly jump story types.  Bleak future dystopian cyberpunk?  Check.  Warm and heart filled tale about a young scamp with a hoverboard and magical powers?  Check.  And then there’s this one, a shout out to film noir, Dirty Harry, Harry Dresden, and Chase from the Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind all rolled up into a block faced, four armed protagonist.  I’m not entirely certain where I’m going with the story, and that’s almost completely tangential to my real objective: Crafting a highly memorable protagonist.  Honestly, if all that people remember from this story is Sam Click, then I’ve succeeded beyond even my own wild expectations.

With further (improbable) dreaming,

Through a Smokey Haze – Part Three

Anyone who knew Sam Coli’q’uea would recognize the almost feral smile which stretched across his brick-like chin.  The cherry of his cigarette, and the deep crimson of his skin made him look like a mythical Terran demon wearing a trench coat.  The beings under Horizon’s canopy who had been on the receiving end of that smile knew the description was more accurate than anyone could have known.  The boom as four extremely muscled arms clapped their meaty two thumbed hands in stereo was fit to raise the dead.  Both of the Horizon PD CSI team members let out various sounds of startled dismay, and poor Sargent Aleryia required a few minutes to smooth down her hackles and gloss over her lack of composure as something deliberate instead of a show of nerves.  The Shisheen would never admit to any of their species succumbing to actual fright.  “I have been able to satisfy your request, Mr. Coli’q’uea, and the computer is meow reconstructing the crime scene without regards to the late K’th’rek V’lithlian’s constitution.”  Aleryia’s eye slits dilated to twice their normal size as her fork began projecting the reconstruction of K’th’rek’s demise, overlaid on the alleyway in stunning and vivid detail.  

Sam watched, impassive at the severity of the scene laid out before him.  The mysterious attacker had been spotted as he made his approach.  It was obvious from all of the information available, and the work of the e.l.f. at Horizon PD’s HQ, that K’th’rek had acted first, and had done so with a speed and ferocity that could’ve disemboweled an interdiction cruiser.  The speed of the attack, breaking the sound barrier several times in the space of a few milliseconds, should’ve caught the attacker completely off-guard.  The force of such a blow, with the titanic strength of the Vissh’kithik paragon behind it should’ve been equal to a small thermonuclear explosion.  Yet the attacker seems have taken both the speed and the strength of the attack head on, and not only had they not been phased by the blow, they had knocked off one of her fighting pincers with their return blow.  Impassive as he always was, Sam felt a chill as she saw the ease of the reconstructed perpetrators strike which had neatly severed a sixth of K’th’rek’s arsenal.  She was actually forced to give ground.  K’th’rek must have known that she was somehow outmatched, but she had been the locus of brutal fighting for at least six millennia, and she had not gone down easy.  The fight lasted a good twenty minutes, and all of the blows were constrained to the bodies of the combatants.  The walls and floors only gave the barest indication of what had happened, and Sam knew that the e.l.f. was extrapolating a best guess of what had occurred.  Still, it was a chilling melee.  In the end, broken, missing most of her external appendages, K’th’rek V’lithlian had succumbed to her attacker.  Her body was savaged for a long time after she had died.  Whether it was an uncontrollable blood frenzy or a statement to the rest of the Chimera, not even Sam’s seasoned mind could fathom.  Maybe both, maybe neither.  Sam bent his head against the rain, lower right hand flicking his spent cigarette butt as he lit a fresh cancer stick and took a pull on the soothing smoke.  Rain ran in small waterfalls off the brim of his fedora, and he tried to organize everything that he knew about the seedy underbelly of Horizon.  An unimaginable power vacuum had just been rent open, and it would be a blood bath of epic proportions if Sam couldn’t find out who had done this, and fast.  Hands in his pockets, Sam Click let out a breath, staring up into the twin mooned night sky through the rain and his own smokey haze.  

Sisheenfully,
Justin