Everything Old is New Again

This is apt to be a bit rambling and you’ll understand the bulk of this post best if you were with me way back in the Dark Ages when I was Moon Mistress and wrote some pretty damn hot and very original Stargate SG1 fanfiction.

I said…it was ‘old’…didn’t I?

For those of you who haven’t, we’ll start with a few other subjects and work our to the re-write of Daughter of the Gods.

I hear gasps. I hear snickering. Mostly I think I’m hearing; WTF?

In a minute, folks. In a minute.

“Island of War” has stalled just like the other five or six Of War stories that came before it and “Harvest Coomb” as well. I’m so close to the whole reveal on that one, I can feel it, but I messed it up somewhere or I just lost confidence. Either way, I want to get back to both of them one day and I think I got on the right track to that because, if you ever saw Labyrinth then you know ‘the way forward is some times the way back’.

To that end, I did a lot of promo and pushing for “Heart” lately. I made all those crazy AI images and put little videos together. I tried for “Genesis” and “First Sin” too. I’ve been looking into taking marketing more seriously and trying to come up with at least a small budget for it. Not easy when both of us are currently unemployed (more on that in a bit…a nice WTF moment for ya!)

Anyway, my journey backward started as I was doing little videos for “Genesis” I realized….again…I don’t like the cover. I’ve never been happy with one single cover for that book. Can you tell?

As I was going through those images a few files caught my attention mostly because they weren’t named. Not really. They were just like raw file 001, 002, 003, and 004.

I opened PhotoShop and clicked on them and was instantly in shock. I don’t remember working on covers like this. I remember wanting to but not actually doing it. Weird, right? Staring at them I was in love I was also in trouble. No one will buy a book with this cover unless they’re at least my age. BUT I love it. So I made a hard cover for “Genesis” and sent it to print.

I know the photo is old. Very old. So old that one of those kids is me! The other is Leaf Owen (or Owens, I can never remember which, but it was kindergarten so give me a little break?) His father took him and his sister, Lori, away to Hawaii in a nasty divorce….something that was still nearly unheard of in the early 70s! It was quite the to-do, you know? I’ve looked for him on and off over the years but no luck.

I’ve always loved that photo. My cousin took it and my house is full of his artwork. The most surprising thing is that this picture is still upstairs in my house. Yes, the original print has survived more than 50 years. Here it is.

Yes, it’s the photo in the locket on the other covers. The lady in the locket is my mom.

Anyway, I made the hard cover and this cover to go with it.

About that time the Great State of Connecticut finally decided that yes, we were entitled to the $14000 from Progressive as I claimed on the Big List…in friggin’ January! I was happy and a bit miffed because $749 is still owed from an old escrow account. We’ve been living on our little savings, had to cash in an IRA to pay the house taxes, and $230/wk unemployment hubby is getting. Yeah…$230! Not exactly Book Marketing Money!

I took $40 of that money and splurged on something else I’ve always wanted to do; buy my own books. Yep, at the end of this week–or thereabouts–I should have actually have a full collection of my books! Complete with that nifty new cover for “Heart”. I can’t wait to own that.

Three days ago, hubby got an email telling him the Great State of Connecticut finally agreed to cough up the $749. It should be here today or tomorrow. Very helpful.

Yesterday, I applied for Medicaid. That was fun. Oh joy. If we weren’t Cheap Yankees, and if we would just cash in and spend the second IRA we would qualify for SNAP. Personally I think that’s wrong. If you’ve worked all your life to put away a tiny something-something for your old age (should you be lucky enough to achieve it) then you’ve held up your end of the American Bargain and you should get a little help during times like this especially if the type of ‘money’ you ‘have’ is the type that gets taxes to shit if you try with withdraw it early because, you know, you frggin’ NEED it.

Never mind. Let’s leave that subject.

Anyway, today, hubby got an email from Unemployment. A little ‘mea culpa’ from the Great State of Connecticut. Well, now, it seems that all this time hubby was NOT entitled to the big $230/wk BUT, rather, $743! We thought it was a bit low for his paygrade and how long he’d worked and all but if you try to argue with them you just get aggravated. No one needs that. Whether or not The State is going to issue some ‘back pay’ here I don’t know but it sure would be nice to have a tiny bit of breathing room.

All good news. On all fronts. There may be a tiny ity bity morsel of Book Marketing Money in there somewhere. Maybe.

Now let’s get to Daughter of the Gods. I was nice, I put all the other news up front, so if you don’t know anything about the Moon Mistress Saga and/or you’re not just interested you can just click out now. See you next time!

I don’t even remember what I went looking for anymore but I was looking for something and thought it might be on my little external hard drive so I opened it up on Friday. I poked around in the ‘Archive’ file and saw a file marked ’10th Anniversary’.

I thought; oh yeah, Danny and Calla. Damn, I forgot about them.

His Majesty whispered; Open it.

Why? WTF? 1-I know what’s in there and 2-unfortunately, I know it’s not complete. I lost several stories over several hard drive crashes. I wish I had the complete series just for myself but I don’t.

I clicked the ’10th Anniversary’ file and opened it. I looked at all the old titles, smiled and heard;

You can change his name.

Ah, no, We agreed a long time ago we weren’t going to do that. We tried it. We hated it. We….

I like Dylan.

You…you…WHAT? NO.

Hear Daddy out, hmmmm?

Fuck. So I sat back looking at the titles I had. I instantly knew we could do Every New Beginning, Dark Illusions, and all the stories in the first short story library. No problem. Well, not ‘no problem’ it was a lot of work. We’d have to settle on new names, places, the whole 9 but with the Find/Replace feature it’s a hell of a lot easier than with a typewriter!

How many Stargate ripoffs have you seen on TV over the last….oh forgive me here, sweetheart…the last twenty years?

Did you say 20 years?????

Sorry.

The answer to his question was; a lot!

But I don’t want to be a Stargate ripoff. If we’re going to do it, we’re going to do it right. We’re going change all of the above (which we’ve already done for all of the above mentioned stories) and we’re going to expand it. If we’re going to break out of the mold then let’s do it right, let’s explode that fucker right off and then chip away anything that remains. But foundation will stay the same.

As we were going through it a bit I realized I should Google myself and see if this is still available anywhere. I tried all sorts of combinations of searches and couldn’t find so much as a mention of it outside…get this….the article the scammers found! Yep, it had all about the Mustang, and Ares, and the water. All of it. Right there. So, found that, woot! I had mixed emotions about not finding anything at all, I was sort of hoping to find those lost stories so I could at least have them for myself.

Most happily, I didn’t find any mention of all that ugly hoopla. I don’t know what happened to those people. I don’t know where they went. I do know I have a bit of trepidation regarding what might happen if they are still out there and they get wind of this so, consider this post me outing myself on this story so they don’t have to be bothered.

After 20 years the world has moved on.

So have I.

So will this series.

I can only hope those people have also moved on.

We went back to noodling around with it when I realized that….

Ah, Big Guy….you become a central part of this, so….don’t you think that’s a little much?

All I’ve ever heard to that question is him clearing his throat. It’s like this one’s on me.

If I had never written this huge Stargate SG1 series I never would have been able to present people with the Ares from the Of War series. No, they would have gotten a much bolder, brasher, go-fuck-yourself-before-I-light-you-on-fire type of a guy. If you think that’s what you got in “Heart” or any of the others…you are so wrong. Without SG1 I never would have been able to ‘tame’ him quite so much. You would have hated him! He is so off the chain in some of these stories its mind-boggling.

Thankfully I don’t have to deal directly with him here until the second novel Dark Illusions. That’s where he bursts on to the scene and starts taking over the entire series. By the end of Daughter of Gods Series (all six novels and 30 shorter stories) he was the star of the show. You either loved him or you hated him or you loved to hate him. Take your pick there.

(Anybody who ever watched One Life to Live and remembers ‘Todd Manning’….put him on maximum steroids.)

I have always loved these stories and maybe it is time to take them out of digital storage, dust them off, and give them a Fresh Look for Today’s Audience. Thinking about it, I felt a spark I haven’t felt in a while.

It could work. This time, with this technology, it could work.

In the original, SG1 quickly became the backdrop of the whole thing rather than an integral part. Not that we’d get rid of it. No.

We can do somethings now that we never ever would have even dreamed of in 2004. So we did. We turned SG1 into GT1. The Stargate into the Bifrost. Found on Titan by a privately owned massive tech company, tentatively called Blue Musk. It might change to Origin X…right now we’re being a little more openly cheeky about that whole thing.

So we’ve already ditched the military in all of the stories. We kept the ranks. Most people here in our new fancy state of the art complex are ex-active duty. They like their titles. Ranks. Whatever. It keeps a ‘flavor’ and keeps me from doing some mind numbing alterations on the entire thing. They got to keep that but they got new uniforms, blue.

We’ve changed all of the names. I ditched Teal’c, I never liked him anyway. He’s becoming HAL–a wicked AI. Very cool. The best part of that is, since he was always so ridgid, I basically just have to tell people he’s an AI and the rest will take care of itself. In spots of Off World Travel, we’ll be able to use him in sciency ways.

This time I made a list! Yeah! Go me! Yep, I have a written list, in my shitty handwriting, of all the changes and I did them all at once in all the stories that might be on the slate so they would match. I wouldn’t forget. I’m good at that.

After all of that heavy lifting I realized, I have to make backstory for these characters. In fanfiction you don’t need any backstory because everyone already knows the characters. These guys are new so I have fill them in.

I realized there’s a lot I need to cut out. I can see the Younger Author in me going off the rails here and there. I need to shorten that ride so it’s faster, again, for Today’s Audience.

Oh, papa, we have a problem.

Today’s Audience can’t handle THAT Ares.

Nope.

I know he wants to rewrite this so we can get back in touch and he’s right.

The last novel that I’ll be able to give people here, if we go that far, is aptly entitled Tarnished Heroes.

I can’t stand to tarnish the “new” Ares. To have people see him as he was before Alena came around. I tried so hard to keep him out of The First Sin but he wouldn’t stay away.

I don’t want to be considered a One Trick Pony. I don’t think I know of any authors who have a character (or, you know, something more than that) living rent free in their head 24/7/365 for 30 years. I don’t know of any authors who stick with one character like this. In series form? Sure. But like this? In one unconnected story after another? Where said character is just in nearly every single book the author writes even the story isn’t really about that character? I managed to keep him out of Harvest Coomb, so far anyway, maybe that’s the problem?

Look, in the end, I want to put every single of one these stories on the market at $0.99 each. The whole Daughter of the Gods series that I can reasonably re-write. That’s two novels and six short stories that will be turned into three novellas. Or something like that. I want to push them and maybe make some money with them.

If he’s in ALL of them but one, and I do believe he is then how does that look to the General Reading Public?

I can’t decide if it’s good or bad or if it doesn’t matter at all.

Since he is such a big part of this and we have decided to ditch Egyptian for Norse, we may, fairly easily, be able to turn him into Thor and Aphrodite into Sif and Eros into Loki.

How’s that sound?

He’s on the fence. He’s not talking on this subject.

If Readers associate this Ares with the one in the Of War series, in this instance, is that going to be a good or a bad thing? If they read this first will they even want to take a look at Heart? If you’ve read Of War are you going to be pissed at what ‘I’ve done to your hero’? (he did it to himself, BTW, just keep that in mind.)

Thankfully, I don’t have to actually deal with any of that in the first novel but I do have to nicely set it all up and lay a very strong foundation. By the end, you know who Calla’s parents are for sure. So, we must decide.

Ares and Aphrodite?

Thor and Sif?

I don’t know.

These are our stories no matter what else, they are our stories to do with as we please and I really should let go of that lingering guilt the Catholic Church left me with. It’s ok to plagiarize yourself. To rewrite an old novel. In the end, that’s all we’re doing.

Ain’t that right, EL James?

Sigh…sorry about that.

Anyway, we are having a good deal of fun rewriting it so far. It was always a good story. Now that we’re no longer stuck in someone else’s mold we can really just let go and have some fun. And…

Reconnect.

On an easier path.

One that’s not exactly set in stone for either of us but, let’s say, it’s a bit guided at the moment. A bit structured, crumbling structure in need of repair. That’s our job.

Thanks for joining me in my little Open Therapy Session here. As you may have guessed by now, as we near our good-bye, he’s finally spoken.

There will be no Thor. No Sif. No Loki.

It’s a risk but Life is a Risk.

If you read this series in a few months just remember, again, he’s done this to himself so don’t hate me for it.