The Guardians--A Novel

Many of the people who know me personally call me “the busiest person they know.” Statements like this began an inner quest to understand my drives behind what I do and why I write. I reexamined my priorities and my life long goals. Over the last three months I have not posted anything new on my blogs. Despite my desire to share my writing with others the simple fact is that my number 1 priority is to be a consistently published novelist and a consistently published poet.

When I examined the time I have to actually write per week, I was dismayed to see how little time I have—despite sleeping only 4 to 6 hours a day. Then I looked at my writing production over the last year, including blogs and saw just how over blogged I am. My goal, as I stated above, is to be a consistently published novelist and poet. Yet, most of my writing time was being spent writing blogs and articles for the internet. I was blogging nine different topics a week. That is at least nine hours a week. This may not sound like much to many of my readers. However, with everything I have to juggle in my life, nine hours is often the only amount of time I have in a week to write. Meanwhile I am working on 8 novels (one is The Guardians) and 4 poetry collections. Something had to give.

As such, I am changing my schedule of blogging all together. I will keep my Coffee with David blog, going on a consistent weekly basis. My others will be as I have time or a pressing matter to share.

Thank you for reading and checking this blog from time to time. Please continue to follow me on Coffee With David as I share the “behind the scenes life” of this writer who is determined to reach his goals in life: That goal is to publish 300 novels and 80 poetry collections over the next forty years. I know how insane that may sound, but that is my goal should God let me live that long.

The Guardians is still sitting waiting for my return to it. While I like the premise of the first draft, I am highly disappointed in myself with it. Why? It reads in some ways like Star Trek. I love and hate the series myself. I love Gene Rodenberry’s vision , but I hate how what I write and other authors write seems to fall into the mold. While the characters may be better defined or of greater depth, the specter still sits over my shoulder like Q tisking it away.

Maybe this is the nature of The Guardians, as it is about a peace keeping force in space. While the technology is changed, there is still the premise and the military sci-fi aspect. As it is not about war, per se, it can easily slide into the black hole of Star Trek-like stories. This is something I wish to avoid. As I am working on other projects, I will return to The Guardians to breathe life into it and hopfully find a way to break Rodenberry’s mold and break out with a better story.

Thank you for reading and please visit www.davidalanlucas.com for articles, blogs, poetry, and stories I write.

I will be redoing most of this website over the next several weeks. Blogs will be back on schedule after March 15th. Thank you for reading!

The third major alien race that is encountered In The Guardians is the Aitans. Ever since I read Jurassic Park I wondered and played with the idea of “what if velociraptors or one of the other breads of raptor had evolved to be the dominant species on earth? What if they became intelligent like humans or more so? The Aitans are a journey down that road of thought. Physically they are a meter to a meter and a half tall velociraptorians.

As the entire story of The Guardians takes place in the Aitan’s star system, this fictional race of people obviously play a major role in the story. As a culture, I designed them on the peoples of earth that gave me the idea behind this novel: The Somali and the people of the Solomon Islands. Both nations have had a history of a rich cultural heritage and of falling on civil unrest and a failing government. These two nations have faced civil collapse.

The Solomon Islands was able, so far, to pull away from the vortex of becoming a failed state. This was due to the efforts of an international peacekeeping force—also an inspiration behind this novel. Operation Helpem Fren (also known as the Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands) has been a strong influence in keeping the Solomon Islands from becoming another Somalia.

Somalia, on the other hand, has become a disaster despite the efforts of the various international peacekeepers, the UN, and others. This is a story of woe that should break the heart and stand as a warning to all of civilization. Somalia once was one of the important hubs of commerce and learning. At one time they were the center of several trading empires. They were once a melting pot of cultures that now has fractured between outlaws, pirates, religious zealots hungry not for the spread of their religion but for power and domination, and caught in the middle are the innocent, the people of various religions who want to live by their beliefs, and the disposed who cannot see the dawning of hope and believe they are in the midst of the long night.

Thank you for reading and please visit www.davidalanlucas.com for information on the blogs, stories, poems, and articles I write.

At the time I am writing this blog, I am excited to report that the first draft of The Guardians has been written and is in the drawer waiting for the second draft to start, which should be in a few weeks.

As I discussed in a previous blog entry, The Guardians has as an undercurrent to the plot the interaction of four races that are alien to each other. Last week I addressed the Howkian. This week, let us explore the Calicans. The Calicans are a feline race based upon the question of “what would have happened if Ancient Egypt never fell to the Romans and had somehow managed to survive into the space age?” I realize, with the ebb and flow of history that the odds would have been against it. But, this is science fiction, and I am the author of the story—which makes me ‘God’ in their universe, so—I win.

The Calicans are far from the first feline race to travel in the stars in a sci-fi universe. Nor is the connection to the ancient land of the sun a new concept to apply to them. However, usually the people are somehow tied up to the ancient civilization as if it never evolved. Regardless if evolution exists, a society must evolve to continue on into the future or wither on the vine and die.

The Calicans were an ancient race that explored space, grew their empire, and sought the knowledge of all they met. After a great war and invasion by a race that is only mentioned (and thus will not be presented in a blog until a different novel) the Calicans form an alliance with the Howkians and humans—forming a Commonwealth.
The trouble I have had with writing this race has been twofold: How not to just have the Calicans be a fictional race moving in the wrapping of an ancient mummy and how to make the character speak uniquely and behave in a feline fashion while still being understandable to the reader. The solution I took was a cheat. I put it off to tackle on the next draft. However, I have made my notes as I wrote and think I know how I will pull it off.

So why Ancient Egypt? And why a cat race? The answer is because of even in modern day, the Egyptians treat their cats like a sacred creature. The other reason is that they made more than one of their ancient gods to be human-feline hybrids. Seeing those statues and thinking in a sci-fi frame of mind, it is easy to picture such an alien race.

In my love of history, the Calicans are a salute to one of the first and great civilizations of mankind.

Thank you for reading and please visit www.davidalanlucas.com for information on the blogs, stories, poems, and articles I write.