The Bryce landscape ... those misty mountains I uploaded yesterday ... reminded me strongly of a place called Ballyntyre -- "Bally," to the folks who live there -- on the continent of South Atlantis, on a world called Rethan. It's a small town in the boonies, surrounded by temperate rainforest. And there's a woman called Eve Lang who lives there -- runs a business called Roadrunner Towing and Salvage. She used to fly medevac ships back in the corporate wars ... she rescued Kevin Jarrat, who'd been left for dead, got him to a healer called Harry Del. And the rest is history. In fact, it's the enduring cult classic of gay science fiction, Death's Head. (A small caveat, before you click these links: these are adult books for adult readers. If glbt content upsets you, best not click. But if you love a hot and heavy SF romp, you just hit paydirt.)
Oh, yes! The challenge: put a face to one of the strongest female characters in fiction. A woman who's got what it takes to fly gunships. Big, strong, tough, and yet 200% woman. Not a kid; still in Military Airlift Reserves -- quite capable of reactivating her old commission and putting in for a transfer ... quite capable of flying the Blue Raven gunship.
If you haven't read Scorpio and Aphelion, well, sorry for the plot spoiler there. But you knew it was going in this direction -- the roadsigns are ten feet tall, in the unabridged Death's Head, right?
So here is Eve Lang, who literally scraped Jarrat off the asphalt in an alley in Chell, Rethan's old, smoggy, corrupt spaceport city. Remembering the scene in Scorpio where the gunships literally held a skycity suspended while the Ravens were in the bowels of it?! The challenge was to put the face to the woman who did that job.
Mel Keegan's verdict was a resounding "Whoa, that's Evelyn!"
Next on the agenda: Yvette McKinnen, the undisputed queen of cybernetics, who was able to debug a super-carrier before it blew itself to smithereens -- and then took on the corruption of Earth's own politics. Brilliant, tres chic, and an unlikely ally of Jarrat and Stone.
Yep -- I'm working on the images illustrating the NARC website. The characters and locations are coming to life in 3D, one by one. Loooong way to go, yet, but we're getting there, and I really am happy with this character.
Jade, September 24
***Posted by MK: my connection is intermittent, too slow for this. Seriously, guys, I've got dialup speeds. How are you expected to do anything these days, at 1990 dialup speeds?!!!
