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Monday, May 23, 2011

The Kricket Project, Part 4

I finally made it back home, after what amounted to almost a week and a half between school in Texas and Oregon, where I permanently live (for now anyway). There's more news, but first, let me continue the Kricket Project by posting a few more character bios.

The Boostmeister: Kricket's booster tech. The Boostmeister is a rather strange fellow. He's extremely short, almost dwarfish, and seems to be getting well along in years. He's still spry, however. He's fairly crazy, possibly schizophrenic, though it usually doesn't interfere with his job. His sole purpose on the Kricket is to maintain and operate the ship's boosters, which give her a sudden, temporary burst of speed when normal steam power isn't enough to outrun an enemy. The boosters are dangerous devices, and the Boostmeister always wears goggles, gloves, and protective leather clothing to guard him from the showers of sparks and flames the boosters are prone to emit.

Boostmeister's motivations are simple: he lives solely to make Kricket fly like the wind. He spends all his free time working on the boosters, which means sometimes they don't work like they should - or at all. He seems to have deigned that his current location is good enough for one of his talents, though it's uncertain what he's really attached to: the crew, or Kricket and her highly illegal, mind-bogglingly fast boosters.

Ricky-Tick: Kricket's cabin boy. Ricky-Tick was an orphan before Skip picked him up and gave him a job aboard the ship. Like most young boys, he's simultaneously curious, adventurous, friendly, and sometimes rebellious. He regards Skip as something of a mother, much to her chagrin. He's very smart and resourceful; he obsessively eavesdrops and he remembers every thing he hears, even from long conversations.

Ricky-Tick wants to do just about everything. He wants to see the whole world, become and accomplished gunship pilot, blockade runner, smuggler, army commander, president, etc. Skip is trying to train him to be her navigator and cartographer, but Ricky-Tick merely tolerates her efforts to educate him along those lines.

Katerina Kroichev: Jonah's missing fiancee. Katerina was a fellow student of Jonah's at the University in the Capital. She has a penchant for getting into other people's business, and as the daughter of the Vice Minister of Defense, she's got more access to such business than the usual person. Unfortunately, her attempts to expose the Guv's many secret plans has landed her in trouble, and she's gone missing. She fancies herself as something of a revolutionary, and she can be very manipulative on top of that. Her disappearance is what prompts Jonah to get into all sorts of trouble in the first place.

And I'll go ahead and stop there with the characters for now. I'm listing them in order of descending importance to the story, at least as it stands right now. You may have noted there seem to be quite a lot of characters. Honestly, one or two of them (maybe more) may end up being dropped out of the story and saved for other works. I've got three more to list, and those will show up in the next post.

As for other news, I already mentioned that I've returned home after a long trip home from Texas. However, the rest of this month and the first part of June is going to remain extremely busy for me, apart from writing. I've got an Instructor's Course for a possible job to attend starting next weekend, and I probably won't be back home until the following weekend. Getting that job is about 50/50 for me right now; until I know, I can't say for sure what my schedule in the coming months will be. However, I hope to keep writing and keep updating this blog as regularly as possible.

I'm looking forward to word on how "Exequies" has fared in the WOTF contest any day now. Not much else to report in my other writing projects at this time.

Until next time!

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