So Nanowrimo 2014 has officially kicked off as of yesterday. As I posted a couple of weeks ago, I wasn't originally planning on doing Nanowrimo this year, but after having one of those "shower thoughts" moments, I decided to work on a collection of short stories. So far I have been doing really well. Last year my target word count for each day was 1,500 words. That is slightly below Nano's stated word count, but I felt it was a manageable goal for a new comer. This year I do still have that as my stated target daily word count, but after two days I am sitting comfortably at 3,396 words.
To give you a quick synopsis of my story idea, my short stories are a collection of adventures for my characters Apath and Spice. They are a husband and wife rapid delivery team set in a sort of despotic sic-fi future. It is all very sci-fi tropish, but I am hoping that I can get some fun stories out of the two characters and their interactions. I am taking a lot of influence from "Cowboy Bebop" for this design. I always loved how that series balanced comedy, action and some remarkably heavy topics.
Here is a quick list of my character profiles for both Apath and Spice. These were brainstormed with my wife and I one evening and truthfully the character profiles are loosely based upon the two of us. Of course, I have attached a little snippet and you can hit the "read more" button below to check that out.
Apath
- anal. über planner
- critical eye
- loving but firm
- tough love
- no suger coating
- polite, well mannered and well spoken
- well educated formally. A bit of a snob.
- good shot with the handgun
- calm under fire
- charming
- musician
- has too many hobbies
Spice
- Temperamental
- Easily angered. Moody
- poor with money, always in debt
- giving to a fault
- good detective or finding things. attention to detail
- hand to hand combat
- can’t pull the trigger figuratively or literally.
- Temple of doom bugs pulling the lever getting crushed.
- good at gambling
- carries baseball bat.
- excellent pilot/driver
- artist
- jealousy
Spice’s hands were clenching the steering wheel of her rental car as anger was beginning to build up in side her. Waves of heat were rising up off the front of the car as the tempterature outside on the highway was a blistering 142 degrees. Traffic on intermodal 1 was backed up for miles and crawling at a snails pace. The aerial beacons for the airway system were offline and everyone who was anyone was now stuck to surface transportation for the afternoon. Traffic was mostly bumper to bumper with accordion like pockets opening up and then closing again and drivers moved like a wave through the stacked assembly of cars. Most vehicles these days do have an automated driving system and normally these sort of traffic problems would not exist, but human nature as it may be inclined many drivers to turn their automated driving system off during traffic for some sort of fear go getting into an accident. They are perfectly fine letting an AI drive their car at speeds in excess of 160 mph, but put them in 3 mph traffic and they seem to think that the AI can’t handle the proximity of the other vehicles or something. All of this of course just makes the entire situation worse and hence why we find ourselves with Spice now sitting at the wheel, her face getting more red and her teeth clenching as obnoxious drivers are slowly jockeying for position in and out of different lanes of traffic.
“Look at these assholes. Mother fuckers!!!!” She flips off a red car that just squeezed in front of her. Her head is looking off to her left at the passenger seat. Sitting there is Apath, her husband, co-pilot and overall much calmer individual. He looks up from his cellphone with a look of disapproval on his face, saying nothing.
“Can you believe these people!!”, shouts Spice. “They need to stay in their lane or use their damn blinker!!!”
Apath finally replies to her. “Would you just calm down. Traffic is bad and there isn’t much you can do about it right now. Be sides, if you wouldn’t have spent the entire afternoon making a cake we would have left on time. I told you we need to leave by 2:00.” Apath gestured to the cake sitting in the back seat.
The returning glare from Spice shut Apath up pretty quickly. Trying to dissolve the potential outburst that was boiling over into Spice’s ever increasing face, Apath tried to lighten the mood by putting on a little bit of music.
“Look, let’s just calm down at little bit. It’s hot out, but the air conditioner is working fine, we got some music and the cake isn’t going to melt. If we are a bit late to Anna’s birthday, the world won’t exactly come to an end.