A-to-Z Challenge Day 26: The Letter Z

Zeppelin

The Universe and You

Space Corps Book 7

Zeppelin is part of The Universe and You as a representation of the colony on Wanethrex's past.  The colony as you may or may not remember is my pastiche on one of the elements from Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, one of the least popular movies in that franchise.  It's the focus of the story that ends the Space Corps saga, a prequel, because it returns the heavy focus to the relationship between humans and the Danab, which is also the focus of Seven Thunders, the manuscript I finished last month.  (As for where that manuscript actually ends up, who knows?  It's not the only one I've got sitting around.)  Zeppelin only shows up when everyone realizes that the problems of the present are reflective of the problems of the past.  And that's the whole point of everything, really.

Here's a way to remind yourself of everything I've yammered about in the Space Corps saga this month:

A collection I'm putting together of all the short stories I've written.

Iron Joe (I Day)

Lord Phan (P Day)

Sigmund Alexander (A Day)

Randall Flint (F Day)

Jacques Mendez (M Day)

Mackenzie Reyes (R Day)

Udon (U Day)

Owen Casper (C Day)

Robert Drummond (D Day)

Alanna Kor (K Day)

Helen Larkin (L Day)

Xanthus (X Day)

Odin Gram (G Day)

Craig Hudson (H Day)

Leonard Veitch (V Day)

Kela Bogh (B Day)

Joaquin Elster (E Day)

Lord Phan (P Day)

Ott Sader (S Day)

David Yates (Y Day)

Odlaw (O Day)

Tsan (T Day)

Miranda Weaving (W Day)

Joaquin Elster (E Day)

Randall Flint (F Day)

Lord Phan (P Day)

Yen Jab (J Day)

Zeppelin (Z Day)

Robert Drummond (D Day)

Lance Nolan (N Day)

Qatar (Q Day)

I've yammered about all of these and none of them technically exists, so I figured you might like a mock look at their covers, to give a different kind of context at the end of it.

***

Kyle Zufalo

Yoshimi and the Shadow Clan

Yoshimi Trilogy Volume 1

Right, and so we conclude our alphabetical adventures with the one death in the first volume of warrior orphan Yoshimi's adventures that emotionally affects her current self, the fifteen year old girl who is experiencing this story.  Kyle is a member of the Shadow Clan.  He's the third one she faces, but she manipulates Ms.Wilson into dealing with him, and ends up regretting it.  Kyle is the first character to face the business end of the Scimitar blade.  It's a soft start to the real consequences of what's happening around her. He's not the last such death.  

Truthfully, I don't care if you ended up caring about Yoshimi or the Space Corps.  I thought I did at the start of the month and even yesterday, but the truth is, this was probably a stupid mistake on my part.  None of this is anymore real for you now than it was on April Fools Day.  It was all just another thing you visited during the Challenge, and probably grew pretty repetitive and you started glossing over it before very long.  I did this because I simply wanted to talk about them in a public forum.  It made them more real for me.  You don't make wide awareness for things in an exercise like this.  This is all about self-promotion, making people care about you.  I guess I now realize that I'm just not that kind of blogger.  I'm not that kind of guy.  I'm rife with opinions and tastes that don't translate well to a lot of other people, even when a lot of other people are aware of the same things, even like the same things.  I'm the guy who liked Captain Janeway, even after "Equinox."  I'm the guy who actually thinks Bush was not a horrible president, but rather a president under horrible circumstances, sometimes of his own making.  I'm the Catholic who won't spend his time trying to get other people to understand his faith, or identify him with his faith (even though I've got two manuscripts that attempt to make sense within the context of fiction what my faith means to me).  Yes, Catholics along with other Christians are called to be evangelists.  But in our Western world we've built up an intolerance to faith. So I spend my time talking about pop culture.  I talk about pop culture because that's what's relevant to me as a writer.  I'm not relevant to anyone as a writer.  Doesn't matter.  Sometimes wasting your time is the only thing that matters.  If you think about it, pretty much everything we do is about wasting our time.  We've got time to waste.  Everything we do is a game to pretend that we're improving ourselves, being better than we are.  We judge others because we want to believe we're ahead of the game.  The real trick is that the game's on us.  Every time I'm in the position of judging someone else, it hurts me.  Not in a karmic sense.  Well, maybe in a karmic sense.  I'm of the philosophy that we don't surround ourselves with the things we've embraced but rather what remains after what we've chosen to reject.  I'm constantly aware of that in my life.  I'm constantly trying to add back in.  It isn't easy.  Sometimes I'm simply reminded why I rejected it in the first place.  In the best of all possible worlds, everything isn't perfect, but rather you're able to ignore completely what you don't want to acknowledge.  Lots of people exist in that world.  It's not actually the best of all possible worlds, then.  It's the worst.

Enough yapping.

***

April was also the first month of baseball for the 2013 season.  It's been interesting to track the progress of the four teams I've learned to embrace over the years.  The Red Sox started out really strongly, which was a relief after a miserable 2012 campaign.  The Angels have been doing pretty horribly, and two players that are otherwise remarkable have been pretty mediocre so far.  The A's have been doing really well.  The Cardinals have been doing fine.  I figure I'll continue talking about their fortunes, maybe once a week.