1,257 words tonight and where I’m going with the storyline

1,257 words tonight.  That should make up for yesterday’s missed goal.

The great thing is that I’m starting to really get into this story.  In my mind, I’m already thinking out the details of the events in the next couple of chapters.  Now, I just need to make sure to keep up with it!

Unfortunately, I didn’t actually start writing until after midnight.  That will hopefully change.  I don’t want to be going to bed after 2 AM every night.

I’m coming up to the part where the main male character, whose name is Sayed (though I’ll probably change that) meets up with the main female character, whose name I haven’t yet figured out.  Sayed and two of his crewmates are stranded on the planet and separated from the captain and the rest of the crew.  They decide to walk out of their situation and try to find the captain.  Along the way, they come across a group of bandits who roam the desert on these bipedal lizardlike creatures and make a living stealing from the local tribes.

Of course, Sayed and his crewmates don’t realize this, so they approach the bandits peacefully without expecting a fight.  When the bandits attack, a firefight ensues, in which the bandits are cut down like butter by the superior weapons of Sayed and his friends.  All of the bandits, about thirty or forty, are killed.  However, one of Sayed’s crewmates is fatally injured, and his other crewmate Aaron is severely wounded.

Sayed doesn’t know it, but this group of bandits has recently captured the main female character.  She is the daughter of a local tribal leader of some influence.  While the men went off to rob and plunder from the strange foreigners, their wives and the princess stayed behind.  The wives of the bandits are jealous of the princess and treat her abusively.  When their husbands don’t return, they are scared and force the princess to go and find out what’s going on.

She comes across Sayed and Aaron at the site of the battle, but Sayed (who is peaceful at heart) sees that she is unarmed and doesn’t attack her.  They try but fail to communicate, because of the language barrier.  When the princess sees how sad Sayed feels about his wounded comrades and the bandits they killed, she realizes that he’s a good person at heart and won’t hurt her.

However, she connives a scheme to get herself back home–and to get back at the women in the process.  She takes Sayed and Aaron back to the wives who abused her and tells the women that these foreigners have come to rescue her–and capture them.  When Sayed tries to communicate with them, she pretends to speak on his behalf, and Aaron has such a jittery trigger finger that the women quickly come to believe what she tells them.

She then leads Sayed and the others back to her home, where, to Sayed’s great surprise, he is treated as a prince and a hero.  The plot thickens from there.

That’s the basic gist of the story at this point.  I don’t want to reveal too much in this blog, but I also don’t want you to read about my writing without having any clue as to what’s going on in the story.

I think that’s enough for now.  As always, suggestions are always welcome.

By Joe Vasicek

Joe Vasicek is the author of more than twenty science fiction books, including the Star Wanderers and Sons of the Starfarers series. As a young man, he studied Arabic and traveled across the Middle East and the Caucasus. He claims Utah as his home.

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