The 1001 Nights

For tonight, I thought about reviewing Christopher Moore’s Lamb, which I’ve finally finished. But I’m afraid I can’t give Lamb a favorable review, and it’s such a good-natured story, I’d end up feeling like a bully. Yeah, yeah, Moore can take it, but I don’t feel like being a bully. Not tonight.

Then I thought about telling the story of my first sleepover back when I was a kid. It’s not a bad story, but the high point is the fact the host family were the Wieners and they had a dachshund named Hot Dog, whom I couldn’t help but call Wiener, not out of brattiness but as an honest mistake. And that really isn’t much of a high point.

So when Lyvvie took the bait yesterday, and I quote,

Dish the story.

. . . I decided to leap at the opportunity. Just so we’re all on the same page: this is a new idea for a novel, kind of a big deal for me since I haven’t had any fun ideas in a long while. I don’t know how bright it is to start a new project when I still have old projects in need of editing, but that’s another post for another day. Besides, I’m not starting a new project; I’m only talking about a new project. Ain’t the same thing.

Follow me below the fold if you want to get in on the ground floor of something BIG.

(yeah, right . . .)

A mouthy bit of teenage trailer trash, street smart but not book smart, meets up with Brad Pitt. He hastens to tell her he isn’t really Brad Pitt, just a dead ringer, but our heroine knows better. She’s seen every Brad Pitt movie there is, and this is The Real Pitt. But why would Brad Pitt want her to run away with him? And since when does Brad Pitt tool around in a bangin’ flying saucer? And where the hell is Angelina?

Our heroine has nothing better to do with her life, so she takes Pitt up on his offer of a UFO ride — and that’s the last she sees of her crush. (Oh, maybe he’ll show up again at the end.) She is the victim of extraterrestrial slavers who supply alien bordellos with real human girls. The wealthier ETs, you understand, have tired of their simulacra. They want to screw the real thing.

This takes place in my Silk Road universe, with which some of you are familiar. I’ve written close to a half million words in this universe, and I guess I’m still trying to hit on a story which will take full advantage of its potential. Here it is, in brief.

• There are lots and lots of intelligent ETs of a variety of body-forms. I have ape-wings and gargoyles, clever newts and wily chameleons, bipedal dogs and giant nerdy flies, and more.
• Interstellar travel is nearly instantaneous. Never mind how. The network of pathways connecting the Useful Planets is known as the Silk Road.
• Dominating interstellar trade and travel: the Benevolents, the classic “grays,” except my grays are blue. Spindly limbs, big eyes, big heads, and sharp, pointy teeth. That’s right — Whitley Streiber’s aliens. With teeth.
• The Benevolents love all things human. They have flooded the Silk Road with one of Earth’s most desirable products: media, TV and movies in particular. To keep from contaminating the source, Earth is under quarantine.
• The Benevolents’ obsession for humans has infected the rest of the galaxy’s sentient beings to various degrees. Yes, everybody loves Raymond.
• Thanks to the quarantine, alien abductions are illegal. Everyone would assume our heroine is a simulacrum (cyborg, whatever you want to call it). But wealthy folks have ways of getting what they want, and they want Real Human Girls.

On her first night in the bordello, she’s about to suffer her first buggery, or whatever you call it when a creature with a deer head and a turtle body wants to mount you from behind, when a fabulously wealthy Laroptan (those are the ape wings) intervenes. He wants her for his own and he has the cash to make it happen.

Our heroine is no stranger to sex, but she has a problem with sex against her will. She wants to return to Earth (don’t worry, I’ll make up a good reason) and she wants revenge against the faux Brad Pitt for getting her into this. She needs the wealthy Laroptan’s help to achieve her goals, but she’ll have to trick him into it; meanwhile, she would rather not satisfy his carnal desires, if she can help it. And yet, if she doesn’t keep him happy, he’ll sell her back to the bordello.

This, the reader understands, would be an inescapable dead end, a fate worse than death.

What does she do? She tells him stories of Earth, tall tales believable to an alien who knows Earth only by what he has seen on TV.

Ah, now you get the title of the post. Yup, a shameless riff on Scheherezade.

A novel like this lives or dies on the strength of the heroine’s character and the quality of her stories. If I can find my heroine’s voice, I’m sure the stories will follow. So I’m going to let this percolate, and we’ll see if she starts whispering in my ear.

I think this would be fun, though: stories within stories, cyborg Brad Pitt, and a plucky teenage girl who makes fools of half the galaxy’s supposedly sentient beings.

What do you think? Now’s the time to shoot me down.

D.