Canto 10 – Planetfall
Once back at the docking port on Frieda, Ged noticed that the new space ship Goofy had asked Frieda to make was gone. His concern spiked like an EKG from a surviving victim of electrocution.
“Calm down, Ged,” soothed Ham. “Goofy is unpredictable, but he hasn’t gotten me killed yet.”
“You know what he’s doing, don’t you?”
“What?”
“He’s going after those artifacts the alien computer was talking about.”
“So?”
“Ham! Ancient devices with unfathomable powers? In the hands of a pyromaniac and lunatic? Don’t you see what comes next?”
“Well,” said Ham, looking down at his spaceship controls, “I do kinda see a disaster looming, if that’s what you mean.”
“Exactly what I mean!”
“Oi believes ye need to track yer shipmate down, what?” offered Sinbadh.
In minutes the Leaping Shadowcat was docked and the three teammates were aboard Frieda. In the main control room, they found the Nebulon Princess in a red jumpsuit, her small son sitting on the floor at her feet. She smiled beautifully at Ham as the two brothers entered the room.
“I… am… free…” she announced in halting, yet clear Galactic English.
“Ah… Good,” said Ged. “Goofy at least started the task I set him.”
“I… am… love…” added the Princess cryptically, moving directly toward Ham.
“Err… What?” stammered Ham.
“Oi thinks ye have an admirer, me bucko!” said Sinbadh helpfully.
The Princess reached up to touch one of Ham’s blond curls. “Nebulonin?” she cooed.
“Wha…? No. Human! Definitely Earther. I just have yellow hair.” Ham pinched the skin on the back of his right hand. “See, no blue!”
“Yes, blue…” she said smiling.
“Oh, what does that mean?” Ham blushed furiously.
“Your Nebulon slave girl has been set free by Trav,” supplied Frieda. “She means she is grateful. Your on-board library suggests she suffers from something called Stockholm Syndrome. She believes she is in love with you because you were her captors, but have been nice to her. She was apparently violated numerous times by those who held her hostage in the Imperium.”
“Erm, thank you, Frieda.” Ham said.
“Frieda,” said Ged, as if he had at that moment realized something, “Where did Trav Dalgoda go?”
“I supplied him with coordinates to find the Hammer on the surface of the planet. He went down there to find it.”
“I knew it!” swore Ged. “We have to beat him to the thing! Come on, guys! We go now!”
“Can we leave the Princess here?” asked Ham nervously as the Nebulon girl looked at him lovingly.
“Sinbadh? Can we trust that your corsair friends won’t come back?”
“Nah. Them buccaneers is moighty unpredictable like.”
“Everybody goes aboard the Shadowcat, then,” said Ged.
“Dang!” swore Ham as the Nebulon Princess took one hand, and her little boy took hold of the other.
Catch a Falling Star 
Finding My Voice
As Big MacIntosh welcomes more little ponies into my insanely large doll collection, I have been reading my published novel Snow Babies. The novel is written in third person viewpoint with a single focus character for each scene. But because the story is about a whole community surviving a blizzard with multiple story lines criss-crossing and converging only to diverge and dance away from each other again, the focus character varies from scene to scene.
Big MacIntosh finds himself to be the leader of a new group of My Little Ponies.
In Canto Two, Valerie Clarke, the central main character of the story, is the focus character. Any and all thoughts suggested by the narrative occur only in Valerie’s pretty little head. Canto Three is focused through the mind of Trailways bus driver Ed Grosland. Canto Four focuses on Sheriff’s Deputy Cliff Baily. And so, on it goes through a multitude of different heads, some heroic, some wise, some idiotic, and some mildly insane. Because it is a comedy about orphans freezing to death, some of the focus characters are even thinking at the reader through frozen brains.
The ponies decide to visit Minnie Mouse’s recycled Barbie Dreamhouse where Olaf the Snowman is the acting butler.
That kind of fractured character focus threatens to turn me schizophrenic. I enjoy thinking like varied characters and changing it up, but the more I write, the more the characters become like me, and the more I become them. How exactly do you manage a humorous narrative voice when you are constantly becoming someone else and morphing the way you talk to fit different people? Especially when some of your characters are stupid people with limited vocabularies and limited understanding?
The ponies are invited to live upstairs with the evil rabbit, Pokemon, and Minions.
I did an entire novel, Superchicken, in third person viewpoint with one focus character, Edward-Andrew Campbell, the Superchicken himself. That is considerably less schizophrenic than the other book. But it is still telling a story in my voice with my penchant for big words, metaphors, and exaggerations.
The novel I am working on in rough draft manuscript form right now, The Baby Werewolf, is done entirely in first person point of view. That is even more of an exercise of losing yourself inside the head of a character who is not you. One of the first person narrators is a girl, and one is a werewolf. So, I have really had to stretch my writing ability to make myself into someone else multiple times.
I assure you, I am working hard to find a proper voice with which to share my personal wit and wisdom with the world. But if the men in white coats come to lock me away in a loony bin somewhere, it won’t be because I am playing a lot with My Little Ponies.
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Tagged as My Little Pony, Snow Babies