Showing posts with label Revelations of Tomorrow. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Revelations of Tomorrow. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Mothers & Daughters

One of the aspects I like to incorporate in my stories are families and more specifically, the mother/daughter relationship.

Women are powerful beings. Imagine, they hold humanity and life in their hands - er, womb. Well, you get what I mean. What could be more powerful than that, except when they birth a girl? It's the most visual representation of humanity's continuation. It's like when Queen Hipolyte birthed Diana, Princess of Themyscira...Sorry, geek Wonder Woman moment. (I spent a lot of third grade wearing the Wonder Woman headband.)

Any-who. Where was I?

Oh, yeah. Mother/Daughter relationship. Powerful beings. Got it.

After a woman births a baby, that good old Oxytocin kicks in and she becomes a mother lioness. And the lessons from one female to another begins almost immediately. Yeah, the daughter doesn't really know what's going on, and the mom might not overtly know either, but it's happening. The mother teaches through her very actions what kind of woman she wants her daughter to become. It's instinctual. (Just like they teach their sons, but this is girl's day...sorry Jmo.)

The era, culture, social rank, perception of their own raising, etc, will dictate what expectations a mother has for their daughter's grown up life. At times, it can be an odd, contentious, co-dependent relationship.

Daughters will spend the formative years mimicking mommy as much as possible. This is the time where they get their baseline characteristics. Say the first 12 to 13 years (give or take, pending). After that, their hormones start to kick in...their superpowers if you will. The urge to understand and become their own woman, whether it's to strive to be like mom or strive to completely unlike mom.

For the next generation or so, depending on you and your daughter's personalities, life will either be a constant episode of Dallas or as cold and tense as US and Russia during the peak of the Cold War.

If we're lucky, our daughters will finally come to terms with who they are, and accept you for the woman you are. And vice verse, you will come to terms with your little girl being a woman. At that point the tribal instinct kicks in and you become companions, mentor/mentee, and potentially you'll reach a friendship of sorts.

In my latest release, Revelations of Tomorrow, mother Noah Bonney is trying to reconcile with her daughter. Her own shame, for her people and her past, builds a wall that she can't figure out how to break down. Luckily for them both, Noah's vessel slams into a vessel carrying Jetta McCree and begins their journey into Noah's past. This helps Noah come to terms with herself and open up to her daughter, Brenda.

Below is a scene from Revelations of Tomorrow, which is the first book in the Telomere Trilogy, which showcases the dynamic of Noah and Brenda.

Excerpt
Her young girl had wanted to be a physician since her first scrape, when the vessel doc bandaged her. The whole time she'd interrogated the poor man with question after question. From that moment on, she'd shadowed him and when he retired, the replacement. The dogged determination did her well when she applied for and was accepted into medical school.

Noah had missed her sorely during that time. The feeling had not been reciprocated, she remembered. The tension came back into her shoulder and the light dimmed in her heart. Brenda had enjoyed the freedom from her. It'd been a selfish act of desperation when Noah had bullied all the other captains to keep them from accepting Brenda on their crews. The last year of icy and distant relations with her daughter had been the ongoing punishment.

Brenda reviewed the chart again and then tapped it closed. The image dematerialized and shrunk into the network encased in the bed frame. "I've given her something to wake her a bit, but please don't keep her too long. She needs rest." She tucked her access pad in her smock pocket and moved toward the door without once meeting Noah's eyes.

"Brenda. We have to talk." Noah checked the desperation and strain in her voice. More, she wanted so much for it not to exist.

With rigid shoulders and her hand still rested on the door frame, Brenda replied, "I'm not ready." Emotions choked her words.

"The ceremony is approaching, Brenda. We need to prepare." Noah grabbed the patient rail to hide the tremble in her hands and steady her shaky legs. It's not what she wanted to say, but those words wouldn't come out. She wanted to hug her, but that wouldn't come out either.

"I'm not ready," Brenda said, a little stronger.

She departed, leaving Noah alone with the injured woman. Tears burned her eyes.

Purchase Links
Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Sony, Desert Breeze Website All Romance Books

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

A. R. Norris Checking In

Who is A. R. Norris (and why is she writing this post in third person)?

Let's start again. Who am I?

Well, I originate from the middle-of-the-US where it snows 2 out of 4 seasons a year. *shivers in horror* Being a smart, scrawny, big glasses wearing, tuba toting SciFi nut growing up, let's just say I was the poster child for "GEEK". My mother was a reformed disco queen and free spirited by nature, so the teenage years in Denver were an adventure that contained little restrictions.

When I wasn’t exploring the city, my two best friends and I were writing stories and swapping them with each other. They were passionate stories of unrealistic love, melodramatic violence, and horrific plot lines. Looking back at them now, I can both cringe and laugh. All my stories were set in space or on an alien planet sometime in the future.

And if I wasn't exploring or writing, I was hanging out in front of the television and tape player watching Star Trek, Back to the Future, Running Man, The Abyss, and my all time favorites as a kid, Short Circuit, The Flight of the Navigator and The Last Starfighter. Yup, the exciting life of a geek girl in the 80s.

Oh, and let's not forget that little trilogy called Star Wars either, that bumped my whole elementary school Wonder Woman phase out the window and evolutionized what SF meant.

Yes, Denver was a great place to grow up, when not freezing, but even as early as eleven I knew Colorado wasn't my place. And I knew that space exploration was out of the question. I can't even find my way home half of the time. Plus, you know, the whole technology not being developed and all that jazz.

I was a visitor waiting to find my home.

And I found it, along with the love of my life, in California. The Northern Bay Area is the most beautiful and interesting place on Earth. At this point, I set my writing aside and focused on being a mother and building my career. When the two older were nearing the end of their elementary years and the two younger were just babies, my husband talked me into writing again. I did and felt that missing part of me click back up to the whole.

Phew, was that first year writing again exciting times! The stories, bottled up for a decade, poured out of me. Crazy frenzies of writing sessions followed by the smacking realities of the publishing industry, resulting in the psychotic decision to plunge head first and risk my art and my pride on the gamble of success.

This time I brought to the page a depth of experience and life. I still have future and geeky tech stuff in my stories, but I learned the difference between melodrama and conflict. I also learned to integrate my passion of motherhood, family, and true love into them. For me, the best romance novels are those that go deeper than just passion, to build a foundation of respect and friendship between the love interests. They are the novels where characters focus on more than just their attraction to one another and have an actual life to deal with, that include family, friends, goals and a history beyond just ex's and bad love experiences.

I have several published SF, horror and speculative shorts in various anthologies and ezines, and two SFR novels released through Desert Breeze Publishing. The first is Duty and Devotion, and more recently, Revelations of Tomorrow (which is the first book in The Telomere Trilogy). You can stop by my website or blog to learn more about me and my imaginations. Of course, I'll also be hanging out here the 1st and 3rd Wednesday of every month.

Author Links:
A. R. Norris: Adventures of a SciFi Writer
Website