The Strange Tales of Brennan and... Zivo?

Happy Blog Day Everyone!

Today, I’ve got a special treat, as I’m using this to mark Brennan and Riz’s second year anniversary! I’ll of course be talking about this more in a moment or two but as usual, let’s get the weekly briefs out of the way!

Weekly Briefs

Harvey Duckman Presents…Volume 2

Word on the street is that work is progressing well on the second volume in this might anthology series (yes, you can have a series with just two volumes so far… Don’t judge me.) This should be hitting in July at some point, so if you want to read an exclusive Brennan and Riz adventure, The Black Cat on the Prowl, then make sure to pick it up! As a fantastic bonus, you’ll get so many other great stories to boot!

Crossing the Tees 2019

If you live in the Teesside area, please check out this years Crossing the Tees literary festival. There’s some great workshops on for modest prices. My publisher is also holding a workshop or two, so attend and see if there’s anything they can help you with! That’s not all, the Short Story contest is also open again for entries, with the deadline being Midnight 31st July. All you need is a 3000 word story. Give it a go, as you never know, it’s through this competition that Brennan and Riz were given to the world (for bad or good, you decide).

Creator Chaos

 On Thursday Evening, we are recording my turn in the All About Me series, if you have any questions that you want me to answer, send them in to us, and I’ll aim to get through them all! Check the link below to see Peter Hartog’s All About Me!

The next episode of Creator Chaos will hopefully be going live tomorrow, so keep your ears open and give it a listen when you can!

A reminder of who the rest of Creator Chaos are:

Me – I don’t think I need to explain myself…

Kelvin Rodriguez – Fans and followers of the #vss365 tag will recognize this fellow and his creations, a master of the pun.

Zack Brooks – Author of the ‘Charlie the Cupid’ shorts and ‘The Trials of Amaford” novellas, the second of which is out now so please look for ‘How Not To Be A Scribe’ and give it a read (and if a review, assuming you get the chance!) ! A great guy and the defacto leader of our rabble.

Pete Hartog – Author of the novel Bloodlines, and currently working on its sequel. A great guy with a great taste in music and a fantastic name. He also has a blog you can find here, give it a read!

Click here to listen to all the podcasts so far and look out for us on Spotify and Apples Music Service!

Vector Unit Regen Orphan’s War

Still on hiatus, hoping to resume it soon!
To catch up on the series so far, click here!

If you follow the #CharacterChaos tag on Twitter, I’ve chosen to answer this months questions as the main characters, Drake and Ava. Search the tag to see what they’ve got to say for themselves! It’s been fun using these two for this month, as I feel I’ve gotten to know them a lot better and in turn, helping to focus on their paths going forward.

Brief Mentions

Liking what you’re hearing about Brennan and Riz? Click here to look at the short story collection of their adventures so far! Looking for their newer stuff? Click here for their Christmas encounter with a Yeti, or click here for the anthology containing the short ‘A Walk Through The Pleasure Gardens’, get this one and you also get a whole host of brilliant short stories as well from fantastic authors.

Click here to find me on Goodreads

And now…time for our main feature presentation…

The Strange Tales of Brennan and…Zivo?

The Sci-Fi Origins of Brennan and Riz Revealed

So as I said up there, I’m counting today as the date for  Brennan and Riz’s two year anniversary, or more to the point, two years since the date I started writing “The Girl in the Water”, my entry in the Crossing the Tees 2017 Short Story Competition.

However, they didn’t really, spontaneously burst into existence then…No they’ve been rattling in my head for longer then that. In fact, Brennan himself, had made a home for himself in my brain for at least nine-ten years already, except then, his last name was Torres, and he lived amongst the stars…

Let’s go back to the beginning.

I was wanting to write something new, still wanting to experiment with different genres. One that always stood out to me was Science Fiction. I’m a great lover of Sci-Fi, from Star Wars to Star Trek, to shows like Babylon 5 to oddities that no one really remembers anymore like Space Precinct.
So turning my mind to it, I had a great deal of thinking to do, Sci-Fi, as a genre, encompasses a great range of stories, from the humorous, to the serious, to those that are earth bound, to those that visit the end of the universe and back again. What I wanted though, was fun characters that I would enjoy writing (something that I no doubt share with other writers), so for a fun exercise, I set out creating the main character first.

I wanted them to be different from the characters I had been working on for the past so many years, at the time, this was Cypher and Serena from my Daemon Soul series. So I wanted to skew older, how old? Well I wanted him to have seen everything and be world weary, and to have the worst luck in history. This was how Brennan Torres was born. A human that resided on the place known as Nexus, an artificial world. He lived on the bottom most levels of the planet, sharing his space with other disposed beings. He ran his own business, a Private Detective agency, and was constantly in debt to forces greater then himself. Some of that will sound familiar, but there was a lot more that marked this Brennan as different.

The main difference was that this Brennan bore the marks of past mistakes in the form of a drug I’d called Techno-Stigmata, because of the visible signs that appeared when you used it, neon green lines like circuitry. This drug was created as a means of achieving complete unity with technology, one of humankinds last achievements. Oh did I mention that this Brennan was over a thousand years old? Yeah that was important.

So there’s a lot of elements there that you’d recognize but back then, it still didn’t feel enough. I gave him a love of nostalgia, for human made artifacts and technology (despite humanity being forbidden to toy with technology anymore, a punishment from the higher alien races for the dangerous spread of Techno Stigmata), he also has no luck whatsoever with women.

The character was set, and the world he belonged to was gradually taking shape, but no one is an island, and Brennan was no exception. This led to me thinking of supporting cast, and more importantly, the counter balance to Brennan. Going through his personality, it became apparent that he need someone, a partner.

This partner would be one who he could exchange barbs with, someone, who could hold their own but meant that the partnership was worth more together then they were separate. This led to…Valarie. What? You were expecting someone else?

Valarie was easy to figure out, I’d always wanted to do a character that was a journalist of sorts, and the opportunity to combine that with a very independent woman, who could hold her own against everyone and knew what she wanted was too good to pass up. I pictured her as someone who valued the truth above all else. She’s always was easy to write for, and that’s something that hasn’t changed.

In the beginning she was going to be the offset for Brennan till something changed, after spending a lot of time with her, I discovered that she really needed her own stories, her own adventures, especially before I did the main stories that I planned. It was at this point I decided that before I would do the novels, I would focus on short stories, to get readers used to the world, and , more importantly, give readers the chance to fall in love with the characters. However, if Valarie would be headlining her own stories, who would be working with Brennan?

Time for another new character to enter the fray, someone of a lot smaller stature, and who had a very heavy personality. This was where Riz-I mean, this is where Zivo came from.

Zivo follows in a lot of well worn footsteps, Bender from Futurama, Kryten from Red Dwarf, Marvin the Paranoid Android from Douglas Adams Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and a whole host of others from books and video games to boot. He was a scanner droid that Brennan rescued from a scrapheap. Zivo had was self aware and was the definition of cynicism. This little mouse shaped droid (another comparison you can draw to who Zivo would become). He was an even better character to place with Brennan then Valarie, allowing me to touch up on subjects like artificial intelligence and the nature of friendship and treating others equally. Though ostensibly, none of these themes are new to Sci-Fi, I was going to try and leave my mark with the way they interacted, and through the style of story I was going to tell.

The characters were in place, so it was time to write, and this is as far as I got. Without further ado, this is the first few pages of the first draft of The Theft of the Stars.
-
Chapter 1

 As fire scorched away his heat resistant coat layer by layer, Brennan Torres found time to reflect on his current situation. He looked over to his right to see the little mouse like robot Zivo causally hiding behind some neo titanium crates, probably checking his social media. Brennan's eyes rolled.

 First mistake, accepting this job. He thought as he held his back against the wall, trying to avoid being burned alive, a problem his robotic cohort didn't have. Wait, no my first mistake, was getting into debt with Elessa and her cronies. Second mistake was accepting this job. The flames stopped suddenly and Brennan started counting, and once he got to five, the fire shot out again as an inferno filled the corridor he wanted to be down.

  Why did that lady have to involve me in this mess...Elessa is already enough trouble to deal with, then add Valerie into this mess...At this point Brennan let out a small laugh. All his troubles, they all had women at their root causes. If Zivo was a girl then it would of just made perfect sense. Actually though, as much as Brennan was in danger, he didn't want to be sorted just yet.

 'They're all waiting for me after this aren't they...' Zivo was aroused from his idle mode by Brennan's voice.
 'You know incineration will be a much cleaner death for you' The little robot carelessly moved his optics towards the fire then back to Brennan.  'As you earthlings say you're dammed if you do and dammed if you don't'
 'Thanks Zivo, thanks' Brennan started counting again as the fire stopped but his mind couldn't help but think back to how this job started...

************************************

Fifty Two Hours Earlier

 Brennan swept his desk clean for what felt like the hundredth time. He hadn't had a job for a couple of weeks and he was down to his last few carbon credits. Worse still he knew his debt collector would be round soon, calling for more then he had left.
 Adding insult to injury, the Scherzi that  Brennan shared his building with were going through another religious holiday. Most people would call their harmonious singing a thing of beauty but Brennan was not most people.

To him it was annoying and it was grinding away his last nerves.
 Zivo was being no help, the robot was hiding in the space between the walls, getting zapped up from the pure energy that was leaking from the conduits.
 'I hope you get burnt out you little rusted rodent!' A knock on the door interrupted any worse obscenities. Brennan's eyes locked onto the shadow behind the door. It was humanoid and he could only see one person. This was good as it ruled out Elessa and her brutes, since they never travelled alone.

 'Who is it?' He said wearily. Under his desk though he crossed his fingers, praying to all the infinite deities that civilisations had made for eons, even the outlandish ones, that whoever it was, they were a paying customer.

 The door opened and a naked human strode through, a metal hood obscuring his head. There was a big hint that it was a him which Brennan quickly forced his view away from.
 'For tecks sake' He cursed under his breath as he glanced back to the metal hood. 'A courier. A human courier'

 This revelation put a huge damper on him. Couriers in this day ad age were robots who had gotten into trouble along the way and as payback,  lost their body. Their consciousness stored on a solid drive somewhere. The now lifeless body was turned into a walking  delivery service. Human couriers were a rarity but on the rise, especially with powerful beings who had dealings with humans and near humans. They were a powerful symbol of what might happen if you weren't lucky.
   'Can I help you?' Brennan still didn't know where to put his eyes,  and really he didn't want the message but couriers could not be persuaded and their destruction was classed as destroying private property.
 A red optic appeared from the metal hood and scanned Brennan, confirming he was the intended recipient. Once checked, a slot opened and a stream of green liquid poured out but took the shape of a human, a curvy female figure with hair covering one side of her face and wearing clothes normally reserved for those who knew how to wield power.

 'Brennan Torres...You're going to make me lose my nice girl image'  It was Elessa, the woman who Brennan owed four platinum credits to, a wealth that would take him years to amass at his current rate of income.

 'You never had an image like that' Brennan muttered, waiting for the real reason for the message to come out.
 'I heard that...' Elessa smiled,  she loved catching people out like that.
 'A two way video message, the tech is improving on these couriers. Shame it can't do anything about the colour of the message' Brennan didn't know why he said that. There was always a part of him deep down that strove to piss off the wrong people at the precise wrong moment.
 'No one likes a smartass Brennan. Especially one who has had so many chances to get back into a groove with repayments.  One who has almost spent all the patience I give them, oh and one who faces extra late fees' It sounded like Elessa was being jovial but there was a strong layer of menace in her words, enough to send chills down people's asked.

 'Look,  business has been...'
 'Slow? Sluggish? Dead...' Elessa dragged out the pronouication of that last word. 'I'm not surprised though, especially if you turn down decent paying jobs like the ones I sent you last week' Elessa wasn't looking at Brennan at this point, she was just playing with her hair,  was there a reason why you turned down those jobs I sent your way?'
 'You mean the jobs where they wanted me to kill the only decent politician in the galaxy or the one where I was supposed to put pressure on a guy who owned a asteroid, to make sure he sold it to a nice illegal operation instead a foundation wanting to set up a new hospital free for everyone?'

 'A job is a job isn't it? Or have you beggars finally unionised?' Elessa changed her pose, putting her hands on her hips, her smile sending threats directly to Brennan.
 'Now, how many chances have I given you, chances you swore you would repay'
 'As many as you generously gave me, and I still will repay that gratitude'
 'Oh yes you will, as I, with the patience of  every godly figure out there, have reached the limit. A point where most other lenders would of been using your grave as an example of how not to do business'

 'How ever you're different, as you give people one more chance just because you're definitely the most beautiful crime boss out there.. ' Brennan knew flattery was a long shot but if Elessa had decided that a clients time was up, well, they would be a small print obituary in the next data sheet.
 'We don't use that earth term now, "crime boss", personally I prefer lady president executor...' Elessa said proudly.

 'How universally correct of you,  I didn't realise that earth language was getting censored now'
 'Censored?  Don't be silly, there's better words out there if you're willing to adapt. Though don't think you can change the subject'
 'Change the subject? Not me,  miss "l.p.e" I just thought we were having an interesting conversation'

 'Well let's end this "interesting conversation" then. You've got two choices." Elessa held up two fingers to illustrate her point. . ‘First, you can pay me back in full, or, Second, you can pay me back in full, in person..." Her hand closed into a fist as her smile became downright demonic.
'Those don't sound like choices' Brennan mumbled as he started fumbling around under the desk for his emergency transport fund.

 ‘Want me to chose for you? Its been a couple of days since I’ve been out’ The liquid Elessa suddenly turned back into a swirling vortex as the courier sucked it back in. The naked being stood there for a moment then promptly turned and left. Brennan stood silently for a few minutes,  contemplating his few remaining options.
 ‘Problems fleshy?’ Zivo emerged from his private time hidey hole. ‘I heard a woman’s voice and thought to myself that you can’t of found a date, so I wanted to hear how much this one was going to charge you’
 ‘Four platinum credits’ Brennan started counting the emergency transport fund, scrolling through all the I.O.Us he had left himself. ‘Need to get far enough away from this galaxy as possible...’
 ‘Four plats? My you really have expensive tastes’
 ‘Zivo , you know full well who that was and how much trouble we’re in’ Brennan threw the pile of I.O.Us against the wall.

 ‘Firstly fleshy, I can’t even begin to pretend to care about how many female species you make yourself known to. Second, why am I involved?  Unless you have dragged me into some sordid affair’ Zivo loved taking the moral high ground at times like this, and in another place and time when they weren’t on the verge of being hunted down, Brennan would of just retorted with Zivo’s love of kitchen appliances, toasters especially.
 ‘Zivo’ Brennan kept his serious tone which the robot’s sensors immediately picked up on ‘That was a message from Elessa, time’s up’ The name went straight through Zivo taking less than any measurable amount of time to go through the matrices that comprised his mind.

 ‘...I’m calculating 225 possible escape routes, of which 113 are most likely to evade her detection for up to ten years’ The change in Zivo’s behaviour never ceased to amaze but sadly, Brennan had further bad news for the little drone.
 ‘We also only have twenty carbon credits to help us’
 ‘Updating response...0 possible escape routes as money is crucial. Back up plan, I’m going to crawl in the darkest and bottom most corner of Nexus Prime and cower’
 ‘Why expect any less...’ Brennan circled his desk, like vultures circling prey except he knew he was the prey. It was at this point that Zivo’s proximity sensors went off. Someone else was in the building and on there way to the office.

 ‘Brennan! Someone is here!’ Zivo turned to the door but continued to back towards his hidey hole. As for Brennan, he just braced himself for whatever was about to happen. The door opened dramatically, and a female alien stood there, an air of dignity flowed around her presence lit up to dreary little room. Her clothes were radiant and shone like all the nebula in the cosmos.  She was lithe with long proportions,  her head slightly elongated with elegant features and deep silver eyes surrounded by a pool of black. White hair trailed around her neck and down her back, hiding all but small traces of two bony protrusions which were vestigial traces of wings. Both Brennan and Zivo  did a double take. Brennan wondered if his brain had snapped under all the stress, while his little drone companion checked his programming repeatedly to see if he had been hacked and suffering a cruel simulation.

 ‘Mr Torres I presume’ Her voice matched her appearance, dignified and refined in pitch and tone, though her english sounded unnatural with the pronunciations falling in the wrong places.
 ‘Yes...?’ Brennan wasn't sure on how to deal with this, only two types of people came to him,  and only one of them  wanted to be his customer.  This visitor didn't match any of his previous clientele.

 ‘My name is Fae Drell Sapphire,  or at least what my name is in your Earthen tongue" Fae moved her hands when she spoke, as if each syllable had its own gesture.
 ‘You're a spryte then. ..’ Sprytes were a race of beings that were renowned for beauty and their culture,  hiding the dark part of their history of abductions and experimentations on numerous species,  most of which were extinct. Brennan had little dealings with them in the past, they never ventured out of their glistening towers. Faes face contorted a little on hearing what he’d said , that species name was considered a butchering of their preferred name, that sadly was unpronounceable using an Earthen tongue.

 ‘Is that going to be a problem?’ She asked as her composure restored itself.
 ‘No...Of course not...’
 ‘Unless you wish to perform a autopsy this fleshy and examine my internal components’ Zivo said, as he quickly hid behind his human shield. Again, Fae’s face contorted with a look somewhere in between shame and disgust.
‘We as a species no longer do anything of the sort, besides metal rodent’ She narrowed her gaze at Zivo. ‘There is nothing anyone can learn from an out dated drone such as yourself’ Her pleasant face returned after she was finished scolding him.

 ‘Please don’t insult my staff, especially not my scanner’ Brennan gave Fae a discontented look of his own. Faes chuckled, like a parent watching a child mimicking them with little success.
 ‘Please forgive me, I can’t let talk like that tarnish our pride but I’ll be sure to play nicer with you little friend’
 ‘Okay let’s cut to the chase now’ Brennan said. ‘Why me?’
 ‘This matter is personal and I need someone like you’ Fae looked around and then back at Zivo.

 ‘When you say that...What do you mean?’
 ‘Desperate’ Fae smiled ‘Your name is passed around a lot when I talk to Elessa, something about your debt which keeps increasing towards an infinite point’
 ‘Oh so that’s what you mean...’ Brennan sighed, no matter what, Fae had him cornered.

 ‘Guess you are up that creek without the paddle. Or however you say that pointless expression of yours’ Zivo  piped up.
 ‘If you said it properly then yeah I’d agree with you but  that’s not the point right now’ Brennan closed his eyes and counted to ten. He knew he was going to regret what he was going to say. ‘Okay then, what’s the job...?’ Delighted, Fae began to tell them her tale.

Chapter 2

Fifty hours in the past...

Brennan carefully and slowly made his way through the maintenance corridor though he thought calling it a corridor was too nice a description. It was a rotting mess, the biological wires that used to carry energy had long since burst and left remnants still slowly dissolving. The smell was something he always imagined a bog smelling like, Brennan envied Zivo‘s lack of a smelling function.

‘How much further?’
‘Not long, by your preferred measuring unit it’s just over two hundred meters away’ Zivo replied while scrambling over the mess that was the floor.
‘That all? It’s closer then I remembered’ Brennan looked.
‘Pray tell fleshy, when was the last time you were down here? ‘
‘About five years ago, it was when I first came to this planet’
-
The way the story pans out, you can see there was a lot I took over to Brennan and Riz. The use of First Person Perspective, starting the adventure in the middle of the action then going back, the noir trappings. Everything seemed to be working well but I started getting bogged down in research and the constant question of how much I should be explaining compared to how much I should be let revealed through dialogue and actions. This and other time commitments meant the end of the Sci-Fi quest, but not the end of the characters, as through all this, I had fallen in love with Brennan, Valarie and Zivo, the little robot who could.

They didn’t languish very long as the Crossing the Tees 2017 short story contest made me revisit different ideas in the run up, due to needing a story that was centered the Tees river. Now the future set up was out of the question, I needed something much more contemporary.
Choosing to make this the home of Brennan and Co was a no brainer. I stripped him of his Sci-Fi details, and altered his age to mirror my own, by doing so I effectively turned him into a mirror of me, which was no bad thing. Instead, he became a 34 year old who was deep in debt and living out of his car. He was never afraid to do the right thing but his attempts to do so were always frustrated by his partner, the magical talking rat, Riz.

Transferring Zivo to a modern setting was much more difficult that I thought, as he couldn’t be a robot anymore. Going back to the drawing board, I took note of what shape Zivo was a mouse, so why not a Rat? To finish him off, I decided to homage a Muppet’s name, and Riz was born. I took Brennan’s Agelessness from the old Sci-Fi concept and give it to Riz, turning him into a Rat that had seen it all, and tried to be killed by it all. Valarie also emerged complete unhurt by the changes.

As I was able to transplant her personality and drive into her modern day version, though she wouldn’t debut till the second Brennan and Riz story, Goblins in the Tunnels.

So there you have it, is there more to Brennan and Riz? Of course, as this is only one side of how I created Girl in the Water, it doesn’t include the third member of Brennan’s little team who sadly never made the cut due to the word limit, we may just have to continue on with this next week. As far as the Sci-Fi story goes however, the project has gone dormant once again, it’s heart given to a successor in an earlier time stream, maybe one day I should set up a cross over of the two Brennan’s, would any one be remotely interested in that?

Till next time, remember folks, what doesn’t work today, may be the start of tomorrow best seller.