Son of War Series – My Dark Soul

As planned I set aside “Tin Man” (TM) for this month, to give myself some space. I’ve been staring at it for over 2 months straight and now I can’t even see it anymore. Time for a change of pace.

For January I’m headed back to my “Son of War” (SOW) series. This one is my baby. I’ve been working on it off & on for more years than I can remember. It has changed shape several times and its current form vaguely resembles its initial one. I guess you can say it is growing up big & strong like a baby should.

Here’s a little history on this series…

It began as an attempt at a Star Trek fan fiction piece, set just before ST6: The Undiscovered Country (one of my favorite Star Trek films). Then I fell in love with the original characters that I had created. I enjoyed writing for them more than the preexisting Star Trek characters. After all, Spock, Kirk and Sulu were already established characters, so there wasn’t a lot of wiggle room there.

That’s when my story took a left turn.

I dumped all the preexisting Star Trek characters and moved the focus of my story away from the Federation. It’s still in the Star Trek universe with Klingons, Romulans and Vulcans …oh my! But the point of view of the story, the main character, is not your typical Feddy viewpoint. In fact the entire mood of the story is very non-Trek. There’s no guaranteed “happily ever after” ending. There’s no safe character that can’t possibly be killed off. And those that are killed off (surprise surprise) … actually stay dead. No, I took the holodeck safeties off for this series. Nothing is off limits.

That is probably why this series has such a dark and ominous tone to it. I often refer to it, and the main character, as having a dark soul. There are a lot of depressing elements in this series:

• Death
• Suffering
• Persecution
• Helplessness
• Discrimination
• Isolation
• Manipulation
• Hopelessness
• Despair

And that’s just the first volume! It’s no wonder I named the first book in the series “The Dying Soul” (TDS).

This first book introduces the main character at the most vulnerable point of his life. It is about passing thru change/death and being reborn. Before he can become the man he is destined to be, he must first die and leave his past and his pain behind. He then can embark on a journey of self-discovery, to learn who he is.

(Now before you start commenting about “it sounds like a religious theme”… let me point out that “dying & being reborn” is more a nature theme and its in everything. Religion does not have a lock on that particular theme.)

One of my many goals for 2012 is to finally finish the first draft of SOW:TDS. With TM also on the playing field vying for some of my very limited free time, we’ll see which one gets to the completed draft stage at the end of this year. It would be fabulous if both stories made it. Wouldn’t that just frost my NYE cake!!

– KRR