Recently a new friend that is a published writer read my short story Aeroplane City.   It is set in the future where the world is run by corporations, not governments.  The plot covers a superhero in the making, DangerMan.  His name is Dalton.  The story is a love story however set against a backdrop of corporate espionage.  

I wrote this story at first back in 1993. I wrote it to impress a girl.  I had a crush on a young lady named Stacy Edmonston.   She was out of my league as they say.  We were both young and chasing corporate dreams.  She was a demur looking girl with womanly wiles.  We never kissed, we never dated.  We’ll I did manage a date once.  I visited her at home to cook dinner.  Meanwhile it was interrupted by a phone call from an ex-boyfriend whom I think she later married.  He was someone of big money and was a VP of  a Bank.  I think she said at the time he was an alcoholic.  So she took his calls and dinner was a bust as she dealt with his issues.  In the end what started as a romantic intention; to show a young lady that I didn’t have money but I did have heart, ended up becoming something for myself.  I owe Stacy that much. 

I wrote the main character based on my own character.  I decided I’d make the values I had pay off for my character since I felt in the real world there was little use for a man like Dalton.   But in his world he’d have all the opportunities I did not.  He’d make the best of them while clearly showing the same appreciation for what he did have as I do.

It’s been many years since I last penned an update to what I now consider a Trilogy and will later be assembled as a Novella.  But it has not meant that I have not considered where the story is going and how this character will land in the end. 

It’s so hard for me to decide Dalton’s fate too.  When I wrote Dalton’s first part Aeroplane City I had it clear in my mind.  If no one read another part in his life, the story would end right there and satisfy the reader.  We’ll it would leave them in a state of a multitude of mixed emotions.  I wanted the reader to be at peace with the end because despite Dalton’s fictional futuristic world, his story is the one that happens to us all.  In the real world the boy doesn’t get the girl.  Not always. And even then the emotions of what those characters felt, would tell you that they belonged together; that in the end, they two would not let themselves be apart from each other.

Real life doesn’t wrap itself up in a tiny bow at the end of a half hour segment.  And when you graduate High School or College you are turned loose on a world that doesn’t see you.  No one will just love you because of you are great inside.  You have to get out there and live and let the love of your life stumble across your path.   Being a good person alone is not enough to produce happiness in the real world and others impact your life when you don’t see it coming either.

So for me Dalton deserved that fate too.  Yet Dalton deserved better.  He worked hard to make himself worthy of a great love and the reader should see that he too could get a bad shake at the end of the day.  What keeps him going is strong sense of “self”.  He is very secure in himself and would go on.

In the case of Araby his love, his “kindred spirit” and “soul mate” she needs development.  I’ve yet in all my life to know a woman that I want to infuse her character into Araby’s.  All I’ve said above about Dalton has been my life, but as I write Araby I must only say that what I write for her is very hard.  Araby must be innocent, but she comes from a life that reached a very non-innocent lifestyle.  She rejected it and re-claimed her innocence.   All these things I plan on making more clear in the story as I go.  She makes that stand in part one, but it is not as well communicated as I like it to.  That  I’ll re-write.  Araby is almost an enigma for me.  I know what love is but I’ve never really held it in my hands.  I’ve thought I did.  And I think I experienced what love can do for you, it motivates you to be a better person or worse. I’ve seen it make a person close to me a worse person.  Meanwhile I recall when I first committed my heart to someone for a lifetime, love made me invincible.   I did anything for my love and for love.  So I know what it can do, but for Araby, I need her too to be a bit more flawed so I can make her just that much more attractive.  To have her revisit her own demons is cliche.  I want her to have something more to deal with so she her challenge to be a part of Dalton’s life becomes most clear and questionable to the reader until the very end.

You know, when I decided that Aeroplane City would be a trilogy slash novella years ago, I decided something silly.  If I found love, Dalton would too.  So in part one, it was a time in my life when Dalton was burned hard.  Meanwhile like myself I felt that you could knock me down, but I’ll get back up and get in the race again.  That would be Dalton.   So I still wonder, should Dalton follow my path of love?  Stick around to find out. ;)

Oh, and one more thing.   I’d like to use my e-mail reply to my friend to give you further insight on where DangerMan is going in Aeroplane City and what others think. 

SENT TO ME

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SUBJECT: Evocative

 

Hi Lars,

That's the first adjective I can think of upon reading part 1 of the DangerMan trilogy. You managed to set a very unusual mood -- A futuristic-seeming world, yet the characters' dialogue (particularly Araby and Dalton with each other) was like a '40s black-and-white movie. In fact, I envisioned the whole story in shades of gray. Especially at the end with the raindrops hitting Dalton's face. Lovely.

But sad. I hope Araby comes back in part 2. Was the Sad Cafe a nod to Carson McCullers?

Keep writing....

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MY REPLY

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...  It’s been a hell of a past couple weeks and the stress is almost too hard to bear.

 

I am trying to live on, I know I’ll love again, be happy again etc... But accepting the end of something and moving on is a transition I have to deal with.  My children drive all this and sleep well at night knowing I had to pursue help on their behalf.  Enough said.

 

So in the spirit of living I thought I’d take a moment this morning to reply to your kind words.

 

I did right Dalton and Araby in a sort of Humphrey Bogart Casablanca style I suppose.  I know that movie influenced me immeasurably but until you mentioned black and white film noir I guess I buried that in my subconscious.

 

The world in the future as I see it is a tough place where feelings and emotions are absent based on class.  To get to real people with values new societies broke apart within society.  With money anything is possible and AeroplaneCity is the shining star that most people only dream of.  Almost every inch of the city was considered for aesthetics which in turn drive better moral among its citizens.  It is meant to be a design that is throw-back while of course being a technological marvel. 

 

The Sad Cafe was actually a nod to the band Sad Cafe.  They were not great but had some pretty nifty songs and they accomplished a mood in a few of their quirky attempts at passion through music.  But they were a 70’s rock band and you can imagine how one song can be great and the other is throw away.  They were not great, but had a few tunes that really got me. 

 

I may dig up the book by Carson McCullers since the story appears up my alley. Thanks. J

 

Standing in the rain never felt so much like the sun is a verse from a song I wrote.  I thought it fit the story well so I used it again.  Dalton is a guy that I know myself to be, but don’t have the means to live his life. LOL. 

 

Araby and Dalton will most likely get some tuning (small re-write) as I get along with part two.  Part two is about 1/3 finished.  It hits overdrive fast as Dalton has re-established himself buried deep in his own corporation’s empire with the help of others.  His goal is to bring down his adversary while holding on to hope he can find his lost love.   

 

One day I think I’ll do Dalton proud by finishing the story.  Now that my wife is committed to moving on in her life without me, and I’m a father of two without a lot of social outlets, I find myself working harder on all my old dreams.   I’ve been practicing some songs to sing in some Karaoke Bars to see I still got the pipes to record music again and I’m writing a song called, Not This Time which you can guess what that is about. ;)  Last but not least, thanks to your kind review of my short story.  I have begun to work on the story again and have committed to finishing it.  Since you are already published, I’m guessing one day I can as you to point me in a direction. 

 

I want to elevate my story to brilliant and I think it is far from it.  I want to really work on the dialogue and characters.  To do that I know as I write forward, I’ll go back and re-write conversations or tune up motives of the active players.  I’ll work on the surroundings that impact my players and of course I may even add to the personality of some of my characters some of the flavors I’ve seen in people around my life over the years.   Lord knows I’ve seen some villainy in my life.   There is one thing I’ve learned, villains are warped.  They don’t see their own dark side.  They are selfish to a point they believe their own lies.  But in every case, a villain always counts on beating you because of your compassion.   You can only defeat something bad when you realize doing the right thing goes beyond your own convictions.  I think as I write my story of Dalton and his life as DangerMan that he will encounter this.  I could never write Araby as such a person, in her case she already passed through the gates of evil and emerged a better person.  That is why she left Dalton.  She fears that and wants no part of it.  So although I think my own life may have had a female villain in it, my story for AeroplaneCity will feature a traitorous friend.  Dalton will face trust again and he will learn his loyalty was too unflinching.  LOL, Yeah that has happened to me, I had loyalty that was too unflinching.

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