The Starving Years

About chapters 1-2

Starting a project always carries equal measures of excitement and trepidation for me. It’s exciting because literally anything can happen without contradicting something that’s been said earlier on in the story, or without a character seeming out-of-character. The sky is the limit, and when you start a story, everything you say is true—it’s daunting, though, because it sets the stage for the whole rest of the story. If I say the sky is orange, then for everything subsequent, I’ve got to be careful not to talk about orange sunsets as if they’re anything unusual, or to say someone’s eyes are blue like a cloudless sky.

I was already starting Starving Years with more material than I often have at the beginning of a project. I had three fairly developed characters, I had a quick synopsis of the story, and I had an idea of somewhere I could take that synopsis that would be surprising and exciting.

And yet, even having all those elements in place, it’s amazing how many decisions are yet to be made. Where in the timeline do I start? Do I show the “superfood” being invented or discovered in 1960? Do I show people’s reactions to it as it came on the market? Do I show someone current-day trying to cook with it? Or how about a cooking show? Or maybe a modern supermarket that’s totally different from what we think of as a supermarket! (I love those automats they have in Japan; that would be fun.) How about a farmer? Or how about people keeping pigs and chickens as pets? So many places I could begin!

I checked in with two of my fellow Madison Vampire Coven cronies to get going. As I suspected, getting input from SF/F guys was extremely helpful, and they both zeroed in on some of the societal ramifications of a cheap and plentiful food source from the start.

As I needed to develop more of the characteristics of the superfood, and also fix some of the backstory in my mind, I started off with an oversized piece of paper and just free-associated different words and concepts. Playing with it in a non-linear way made the world-building come incredibly fast. Once I had that down, I was almost ready to start writing.

mind map

I realized from the supporting cast of Zero Hour I’d need more than just three characters. Both Nelson and Tim had the capacity to be abrasive, so I brought in Randy to make them look a bit better in comparison. Nelson is supercilious, but at least he earns it. Randy is happy to take credit for Nelson’s ideas without earning it in the least, so our senses of fairness make smug Nelson seem a bit more appealing as a leading man.

I definitely needed a female element, so I brought in Marianne. Originally she was going to be Nelson’s boss, but something shifted between the time I envisioned her and the time I actually wrote her, and she came out as his cohort instead. The guys in the cast seemed male to a fault, so I needed her to be more empathic than them. I think she speaks for the reader when she sees something’s not fair, and she’s not going to just lie down and take it. Nelson also isn’t very adept at analyzing his own feelings, whereas Marianne loves to talk about relationships and emotions. She’s also a snap judge of character, so she bonded with Nelson immediately, with such openness, I fell in love with her right away.

As I conceptualized the opening scene, everyone was supposed to already work for Canaan Products, and they’d be in a boardroom brainstorming their next big release. Then the mysterious keyboard mojo that I don’t quite understand happened, and instead the scene became a job fair. I’m not sure if it’s possible to over-dissect this part of my particular writing process, but there is this space for me where totally unplanned things happen at the keyboard, and I enjoy going with those things, taking those tangents and unexpected turns, because in my experience those things fit together in a more complex and interesting way than anything I could map out ahead of time.

Of course, my own experience with the world’s dumbest workplace trust exercises informed the various hoops the people at Canaan were trying to make Nelson jump through to score the job. I’m permanently scarred by one of those things where I was forced on a paddleboat in the middle of a lake with the only co-worker in the whole organization I couldn’t stand—which was specifically why management chose that pairing. It backfired on them. We didn’t come off that boat singing “Kumbaya.” She forced me to burn pink in the sun with the sunshade down because she wanted to work on her tan, and I reached shore disliking her more than ever. To this day, I hate corporate anything, and even remembering the paddleboat incident provokes my fight-or-flight response.

Because I’m turning some creative control over to the readers, the story will become its own trust exercise—though of course I wouldn’t put a non-viable option in as one of the choices, so it’s not as if the story will go somewhere unworkable. It’s interesting how I need to focus on foundation and logic rather than outcome, because I really can’t plan all that far ahead!

I’m eager to see where you and I take this story together!

The Starving Years

Imagine a world without hunger. In 1960, a superfood was invented that made starvation a thing of the past. Manna, the cheaply manufactured staple food, is now as ubiquitous as salt in the world’s cupboards, pantries and larders.

Nelson Oliver knows plenty about manna. He’s a food scientist—according to his diploma, that is. Lately, he’s been running the register at the local video rental dive to scrape together the cash for his exorbitantly priced migraine medication.

In a job fair gone bad, Nelson hooks up with copywriter Javier and his computer-geek pal Tim, who whisks them away from the worst of the fiasco in his repurposed moving truck. At least, Nelson thinks the those two are acquainted, but they’re acting so evasive about it, he’s not sure how they know each other, exactly. Javier is impervious to Nelson’s flirting, and Tim’s name could appear in the dictionary under the entry for “awkward.” And with a riot raging through Manhattan and yet another headache coming on, it doesn’t seem like Nelson will get an answer anytime soon. One thing’s for sure, the tension between the three of them is thick enough to cut with a knife...even one of those dull plastic dealies that come in the package with Mannariffic EZ-Mealz.

The Starving Years first chapter on JCP Books

Release date: 3/5/12

Series: Standalone
Length: Novel - 96,000 words - 320 page PDF
Cover artist: Jordan Castillo Price - see larger cover
ISBN: 978-1-935540-43-4

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