In my day job, I come in
contact with many personalities from different nations of the world. Why wouldn’t I take the opportunity to write
about a geek who was Russian? Aquarian
Stars started as a mere jotting on a post it note: ‘Go to the planetarium’. Most people go to movies or read in their
down time, I go to planetariums and observatories when my life allows me to get
away from it all. As I was watching
the constellations, I remembered back to my 9th grade history class
and the Russian and US space race and John F. Kennedy’s “We Choose the Moon”
speech. He stated “We choose to go to
the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but
because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the
best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are
willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to
win, and the others, too.” (John F. Kennedy, Speech at Rice University,
Houston, 12 September 1962)
And you thought this was
just a blog about a book! I’m a nerd and will teach! Anyway, that speech in my head created the
characters of Eloise and Nikolas. So
yes, Nikolas wanted to be Russian, with an accent that would come to America
despite the long troubled history with US and Russian space relations. The conflict with US and Russian astronauts
spawned the conflict for my story. With
every good romance, there has to be some conflict, even if the characters want
each other bad enough they are willing to step outside of what is ‘good and
proper’. Eloise came off as strong and
independent, and a bit of a bad girl who landed on her feet. Nikolas was quiet, studious, but still the
black sheep of his military family. It
was bad enough they couldn’t be together because of the bad stigma of the boss
bedding the secretary, but throw in the fact that Nikolas was from Russia and
had every intention of going back to Russia, what more of an obstacle did they
need? Eloise and Nikolas are the
embodiment of what JFK said; we choose this not because they are easy, but
because they are hard. If their
relationship was easy, how would they know they are getting the best of each
other? If it were easy, would it stand the test of time and all the challenges
that we know relationships will face?
Creating characters that
make you feel is the hard part. Creating
a plot line that is driven by geekdom is even more difficult. When writing the manuscript, I had to delete
many paragraphs as it felt like I was either giving a history lesson and lost
the story or I was being too ‘nerdist’ and went all out factual. I’ve said it before, that I specialize in
the short story format, and Aquarian Stars is no exception. However, I hoped to capture all of the angst
and longing of both characters to make them come alive in a short amount of
time. Yet, I couldn’t resist throwing
actual fact in the story. Kostroma does
house an actual planetarium in Russia that had been in long disrepair and the
telescope lens is that old! Even writing
in short story format, authors still must research and put out their best
tale.
So there you have it,
Aquarian Stars, a little bit of fact with your fiction. Happy reading!
Nevea
