This is a drawing of one of the main characters, Cheryl Lowe. I've been using this pic for some early hype materials. It probably won't be on the cover... While I draw my characters in an anime style, again, here, have a link to my gallery, ) I think I'll keep it away from the actual final book, since I don't want people to look at the cover, see 'a cartoon' and dismiss it as something for kids. Sure, the public is slowly wising up to anime being something for more than just kids, (despite the crap they throw on tv in the afternoons) but still....Anyway, what's Yute all about?
Yute is referred to a little in Lifehack in terms of a military base, but 'Yute' is actually a region in my world which is largely desert.
Deep in the most arid region, there is a ruined city. Not much is known about it, but it's generally assumed to have been built be the ancestors of the continent's aboriginal people, the Aguei. The most prominent building in the ruin is a large temple, and in this temple is a giant statue of a horned dog. It lays quietly there with a fairy contented expression.
As part of a Federal/Aguei treaty, the military guards the temple, and has a small outpost nearby. As you can imagine, this posting is rather quiet, leaving the personnel there to quietly take their watch, and live with each other.
Here's our hero, Cassidy Stanton:
-she gets transferred to the Yute ruin after impressing the ruin's CO, Marcus. She accepts the offer for a change of scenery, having been freshly dumped by her girlfriend.Meanwhile, thanks to the events in Lifehack, the government is passing prohibitive laws against nano-technology, which leaves a stress-filled nanite researcher in a panic. He has a project running quietly around the temple that not even his bosses know about. He wants to shut it down, but he lacks any way to get back to the temple, and finds himself deceiving some dangerous allies in order to cover his butt.
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Yes, my protagonist is a lesbian again. Why? Lifehack touched on some fun aspects, pushing off from the rehashed hollywood guy/girl relationship, and opening itself to all kinds of orientation awkwardness. In Yute, I want to approach the idea from another angle, a little more seriously, and without the "waaah, the girl I love is straight!" factor.
Really, Yute is a lot more about interpersonal relationships than Lifehack was. It's still a sci-fi, but there's next to zero gunplay, and zero zombies. It's a much slower pace than Lifehack, so I'm hoping it won't throw people off..
Right now, as I said, I'm putting the writing of the first draft on hold while Lifehack gets reworked. This is a bit of a relief, I was getting very close to a very dark, touchy section. I knew it was coming, and had a nightmare about it.
In this dream, I watched some of the worst moments that will be in the story in slow motion, over and over like some Oliver Stone movie gone mad. All the while, the Doors song "House of the Rising Sun" was playing.
That's definitely going on the official, unofficial soundtrack.
(On a side note, Cassidy's favorite song is "No Heaven" by DJ Champion)
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Next post will be about the third planned fiction, Echoes...
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