2503.16 18/—Cook #Writever #Mars #SpaceOpera

It was Randolf's birthday. His third since the attack. He was disabled.

Could Randy have returned to Earth soon enough, he'd not have been paralyzed. The knifing cut nerves. Marisela's gluing had prevented bleeding, but interstitial blood applied pressure, killed tissues. Delayed surgery and first aid affected recovery. This was Mars. Men died disproportionately. Only men were doctors.

The nisei, when not thworted by Elysium, worked to change that.

May Ri used her engineering design skills to make him feel more able bodied. Today—after letting him sleep in—that meant hanging pulls, mattress handholds, and a bed wedge. Kind of selfish of her because nothing would convince her to be sex-deprived without a fight. Making him confident ensured her satisfaction (well, more than just satisfied as it happened), which in turn worked for him, causing him to drift off into a happy sleep afterwards.

Most days they ate at the Commons, but today she cooked vegetable soup. Raquel, who worked the farms, insisted if she wanted fresh, she had to pick fresh. They roamed the acres and acres of green fields set to specific Earth months and climes. She cut Napa cabbage, pulled parsnips, carrots, and leeks, shucked corn, snipped basil and herbs. The 14-year-old even "dressed" a chicken for her, but didn't make her watch or listen. She splashed it into a pot to boil for hours.

Reina, Carlos, and Adrian brought fresh-baked bread, the yeast fragrance melding with the spicy meaty soup aroma in the humid kitchen alcove. When Marisela (who went by Mari now!) arrived with her pod mates, Rufus and Raquel, carrot cake, sparkle candles, and her little sister—who walked holding her hand—the 4-year-old immediately promised to behave herself to join "the adults."

May Ri didn't understand the nisei term pod, other than it was a very nisei-type friendship that was likely more, but she had decided her daughter deserved being trusted amongst other Martians. Nobody had trusted her when little, so she was going to trust now. The mothers in the crèche watched the twins. Mari had hit her growth spurt, and though three years younger than her friends, she was their height.

And excited.

When her Dadie returned, on a crutch, she was pointing with a thumb that he'd missed the big box behind the sofa, bouncing, which he noticed and ruffled her hair. With Secretary Īto and her onigiri meal joining via vid-downlink, May Li served bowls and Randy tore bread. They celebrated.

Chewing, behind a hand he said, "Your spinlaunch maker build-test completed successfully today."

May Li stood reflexively, splashing soup. "Really?"

That meant machinery and supplies spin-thrown along the projected monorail line retroing safely, then building track-makers that became a length of track that in turn built the next segment, ad infinitum. The problem of transporting from the factory and steel mill, solved.

"Next year we ride to Isidis Township!"

Not to closer Elysium. Nobody wanted to encourage the ridiculously religious domes. The nisei, now the majority of the population with more teenagers than imported men, had vetoed Elysium—not that they had actual power, but the board of directors absent mandates from Earth wasn't disputing them.

Spinlaunchers, one of her projects, already orbited refined metals for Deimosbase, and orbited parcels from 16 Psyche. V3.0 would be powerful enough the throw 16 Psyche's ore into high eccentricity Mars orbit. A better version that could throw to Earth-Moon orbit wouldn't go over well, May Ri thought. She broke out the berry wine and tumblers. Though Randy didn't drink, they all toasted. Mari dutifully diluted hers 1:4 and let Manette sip.

Presents were an Earth thing, not a Mars thing. Martians lived communally. Nisei always said Your presence is all the presents allowed. Today was special, though. Mari, giggling, forgetting she was grown up, skipped to the box and rolled it to her Dadie.

Confused, he asked, "What's this?"

The girl returned, as precocious as ever, or maybe she was making a Nisei-centric point: "You always make Momie happy, so she made this to make you happy."

Everybody said, "Awww." May Ri felt her face warm.

He opened it, revealing a bunch of blue denim-covered flex-shroom pipes and harnesses. May Ri punched the control, and it unpacked itself with a soft hum. They'd revived a century old idea of exoskeletons for mining and heavy construction, which women wore to replace missing men in open jobs. It made for safer work for women, and men.

This one was lightweight and stylish, designed for inside wear. She had a pressure suit version in the works, but would surprise him with that tomorrow.

#RSMarsNeededWomen 18

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

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@orionkidder

How do you, personally, make characters?

Do you design them to interact with each other?

Rarely. Design is a squishy word. Do they show up on stage for a purpose? Yes. Randy showed up for May Ri when she was required to marry someone. (It was in the contract she signed along with a one year time limit.) We soon learn he was supposed to marry May Ri's friend, but he agrees. Streak Carryingaton and Thorn Rose appeared together, from a reference in another novel to a pair of astronauts. I immediately decided they were a couple, because their very existence needed to disrupt an entire lost civilization. I guess that's "designing them to interact," huh? Not like I'm taking out a piece of paper and writing a character sketch or list...

Do you flesh out their backstory before you start writing?

Pretty much never. Backstory generates itself. As people interact, I end up asking myself why certain details matter. Why did Randy mean to marry Reina not May Ri. Why was he on Mars? Why was this guy especially nice? Turns out he was a woman's rights activist at a period in time, like now, when reactionary forces put the hammer down. Lots more came from that. That sorta thing. I've been caught showing such rich generated backstory that I've been called out to write that story. My first published novel was the backstory in another novel I never finished as a result.

Do you discover them as you go?

Yep. As above, I find characters when I need them to fill rolls that pop up.

Do you decide on race, gender, religion, sexuality, and all that ahead of time?

With Streak and Thorn, I knew I was writing a feminist parable of the 1960s moonshot years, detailing the prejudice and the sexism, but also poking religious fanaticism in the eye. Streak and Rose need to be different, so I made him a day angel and her a daemon. (Mind you, they're both entirely human and their "types" are inherited from other stories, so the angel x daemon thing is a serendipitous matchup.) Their people distrust each other in this time period; essentially (NOT physically,) he's black, she's white, and they're a couple. Defines their sexuality. The concept of religion doesn't apply. And that's the thought process I started with. The rest flowed from action in the story.

Sometimes sexuality is important. Cloud Dancer is gay because I wanted to have him talk with the main character about what that felt like, and to help flesh out the society they live in. Other characters made my gay-dar antennae twitch, which eventually led to me writing a gay romance side story for them. All discovery while writing.

Do you divide them between heroes and villains?

People show their true colors, but when certain people show up on stage, I know their purpose immediately. When one of the board of directors for EM Mars Corp shows up in May Ri's habitat, ordering the women congregate in one dome, stating they're redistributing women's labor to put them to better use, and names "being married" one criteria, it becomes obvious something's wrong. He becomes a recurring villainous antagonist and he's helping me now advance the plot. He's May Ri's nemesis. She regrets not letting him die the time she could have done that.

Do you "see" and "hear" them in your head?

I can't visualize people in my head as some people can. My type of shy often makes me not look at people, to avert my gaze, especially when I was kid and I suppose one learns this type of visualization. I can take a thing, like a plush toy and rotate it in my head to see all sides, so I think it is learn it or lose it. In any case, I can only tag people's attributes in my head.

I try not to describe people except vaguely, like eye color and height, so readers can relate to them better. Half way through Mars Needed Women, all we know about May Ri is her daughter has dark hair like she does, and that she's physically fit, and better than average height. That's it.

On the other hand, I assign characteristics when I think it will enhance other characteristics. The first person born on Mars has red hair and freckles, but asian eyes. Since she's treated as something of a big sister and a princess by all those born after her, I wanted pretty. The asian eyes got her the title Onēsanue (O - honorific, Nēsan - Big sister, ue - higher, special) and Japanese ancestry, which got her the surname Īto, which in turn helped describe her mother, one of the Directors, etc.

In another story, when it became important that a woman could sing, she got a soprano voice. The voice of the main character, who is the daughter of a famous opera singer who died, is only described as singing her mother's songs in the shower, and crying at the same time.

Lots of process here. Hope it helps!

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#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2503.17 2/2— Does alcohol intake influence your writing?

A Pink Squirrel is actually a low alcohol drink. Lots of sugar, though. Spent a little over two hours revising on a super-difficult topic chapter^† that I expected would take four, and wouldn't publish until morning.

Conclusion: No Effect! (I don't like feeling inebriated, in any case, so maybe not a fair experiment?)

I'll take the question another way. Does alcohol intake influence story plot lines?

Occasionally. It has its place, but other than a glass of wine at a state dinner or sipping an apricot cordial being courted by a gorgeous guy, usually not that much. The largest part alcohol played was a chapter in Reluctant Moon.

I've been watching Korean dramas recently, where drinking, drunk Koreans revealing secrets, and alcohol rituals play a significant role in almost every series. So... I thought, Why not? I wanted to make certain points with a gay older man SC and the soon to be college student male MC who is currently being tutored by him. This follows the man and his partner breaking up, making a scene at their campgrounds. He makes a point of wanting to get drunk, but the MC won't let him... Until the older man volunteers to teach him how to drink with a woman. Needless to say, much juicy dialogue and repartee follows, and things like holding the bottle to show the label, how to turn your face drinking the soju, and even how to do a "Love Shot." Later, the college student ends up with his twin sister, but that's another subject altogether.

—————
† Chapter 17, completed, is here: https://eldritch.cafe/@sfwrtr/114181906907397307

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

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