Pale Face
An outcast loner survives the impossible. How can he survive becoming the proof that no one can deny?
Movie Indiegogo Crowd Funding Campaign
Movie Crowd Funding Launch Party! | Interview with Producer Katherine Norland | Interview with Director Tom Konkle
Award-Winning Science Fiction Novella
Paperback $10.27 | eBook $2.99
Sample | Reviews | Video Recommendation
Honorable Mention: L. Ron Hubbard's Writers of the Future Contest • 2024 International Firebird Book Award Winner
Story Behind the Story
I wanted to enter L. Ron Hubbard's Writers of the Future Contest, which meant it had to be science fiction, and also meant that it had to be shorter than any of my novels. So, each time I entered, I had to write something new. (Took me years to finally win something, which was with Pale Face.) So, for that small of a word count, I thought it should be present-day sci-fi, because world building would make it too long. The only "real" sci-fi in present day is alien invasion or alien abduction or first contact, but alien invasion would go back to the world-building problem. I wanted to have a Native American and I am part Cherokee, so that was what I wanted. (I have been fascinated by Native American culture ever since my grandma told me about out Cherokee lineage when I was a kid.) However, if I was going with the alien angle, it had to be in New Mexico (I couldn't pass that up ... the Roswell Incident, right?).
Next problem, there are no Cherokee reservations in New Mexico. However, I had driven through the Ramah Indian Reservation (which is Navajo), so I chose that.
I didn't want to do the typical alien-abduction story, so how could I turn that on its ear? First, I eliminated the whole "humans are lab rats" sort of abduction story. Next, I eliminated the "we come with a mission" story. Then I thought, "What if they came just to check us out and contact was completely accidental? What would cause that? It they're coming to Earth, they could probably outsmart every bit of technology. But what about the kind of stuff they might not anticipate?
The Navajo have stories about the Sky People, but then I'm back into world-building.
There are some who say cats hiss at ghosts. What if an animal sensed the aliens? What would happen? How could I ensure my Navajo character being inextricably intertwined with the animal sensing the aliens? Probably if he's in the same space at the same time, like if he's riding the animal, so it had to be a horse.
Next hurdle: the aliens are discovered. What do they do? They went to a lot of trouble to be there and be undiscovered. Why? Because they're not here to conquer the "puny humans." It's like parking the car in the dark, then someone turns on a flashlight in your face. What do they do? They panic. What do people do when they panic in a car with the gear shift in park? They sometimes put it into reverse instead of drive and get into an accident.
So that's what they did. It was an accident. A spacecraft would have likely just crushed them, but what's the fun in that? So there's some kind of energy field (or something) surrounding the ship and it cuts them both in half. They are not so inhuman that they do not understand right and wrong. (Otherwise, they would not have panicked.) They know it's their fault. So they do what they can to fix it. They put him back together. The whole thing was probably unauthorized, so they flee as soon as they are satisfied that he won't die or be permanently harmed.
That's not much of a story, though. So I told it from Hector's POV. That creates some tension. To limit the Navajo world-building, he's born on the rez but educated in the white-man's school. Creates tension/conflict, which also makes it not as unusual for him to be out alone at night with his horse. He would be traumatized, so he would look for help finding the truth: thus, the ufologist. I like to jump into the deep end with my stories, so we start with him coming out of coma. My mom was a feisty, super smart nurse. (She was also my medical consultant for the novella.) So she inspired me for Nurse Bradley. The government angle was a must.
It's important to note that this was in 1992 (X-Files didn't air until the following year), so my "turning government men on its ear" was in response to the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which came out when I was a kid. Rather than being very intellectual and capable, one g-man was intellectual and laid back, charged with the task of "taming" the younger hot-headed g-man.
I could go on and on with this, but this tells the story behind the story of coming up with the story of Pale Face.
There actually quite a bit more to tell. As previously mentioned, there was a word limit and I didn't own a computer at the time. I hand wrote it and took it to college to type it only to find that it was too long (by at least triple). Editing it down was one of the hardest things I've ever done. I reread and edited it so many times that the original version is ingrained on my brain. I literally got to the point of saying, "If I use this word, I can cut three words." When I turned it in, it was at the word limit.
Now that Pale Face is in movie development and I'm writing the screenplay, all the additional stuff I had to cut is going back in!
 |
||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |