Alien in Amsterdam: Candy Crisis
The story of the story, and the story of this newsletter...
(NOTE: This is my first newsletter since migrating my list from MailerLite to Substack. Most of you are from my MailerLite list and have been hearing from me every other week for a while now… You’ll get one more newsletter in that format next Thursday, and from then on I’ll return to the every-other week cadence right here! Thanks for sticking with me through this transition!
Also - during the transition you all received the *wrong* welcome email from this system! Argh!
-Adeena)
Before we get to the actual story, let me tell you the story of the story, which is the story of how I decided to start a Substack.
My BIG Sci-Fi Podcast co-hosts and I decided we were going to try writing some of our own fiction. Each of us contributed an “element” and the challenge was to use the four elements to craft our own story. The rules were:
It had to use the 4 elements provided
It had to be in the sci-fi genre (we are, after all, the BIG Sci-fi Podcast!)
Maximum length was 1000 words
I had an advantage over my co-hosts in that I’d done this before. Many times!! But as I was writing my story, one of the things that was forefront in my brain was that I wanted to explain how I did this to everyone. And as that thought bounced around, I decided that there’s A LOT about writing I wanted to explain and pass on.
I also decided I really liked my character Kim and want to know more about Kim’s origin story and background and thought that maybe I’d write a series of “Alien in *” stories.
So, Beyond the Droid was conceived as a place where I can share some of my fiction (and focus on new adventures with my alien, Kim), but then explain everything that goes into creating that fiction with the hope that other writers who are stuck or struggling might find some inspiration and motivation.
The four elements we had to include in our story were: a polygon, a dump truck, Jolly Ranchers, and Vincent Van Gogh.
Without further ado, here’s the story, and my ‘behind the scenes’ explanation immediately following.
Alien in Amsterdam: Candy Crisis
This was the worst day of Kim's short life. Short life on Earth, that is.
Five years earlier, Kim had been part of the first contact party to this planet and after a year-long assessment, the decision was hastily made to abandon first contact plans and get the heck out of here for another century or so. The dominant life-form clearly wasn't ready.
But Kim, and one other, who assumed the name Chris, stayed behind. They both took unassuming jobs. Chris was part of the wait staff of a catering company in New York City. Kim, who had always loved driving vehicles of any kind whether it be land, air, or space, was hired as a dump truck driver in the city of Amsterdam.
The two stayed in touch using technology native to this planet—mobile phones. It allowed them to send text messages with the native alphabet, and images, which they shared frequently.
One of the things both Chris and Kim appreciated about this world was the food, specifically, the sweets and desserts. Kim was especially fond of candy—substances made of flavored sugar derived from a plant that, to Kim's vast knowledge of habited worlds, was quite unique to this one.
Today, Kim was not working. It was Saturday and the dump truck that Kim usually drove—a compact, maneuverable one, designed to navigate the city's narrow streets—was parked conspicuously on Teniersstraat, a couple of blocks away from the open grassy area right outside the Van Gogh Museum—the Museumplein—where Kim now sat.
In Kim's hand was an unopened Jolly Rancher. Watermelon flavor. And the source of Kim's angst today. Kim had only just learned—via a text message from Chris—that the company that makes Jolly Ranchers were discontinuing this beloved flavor.
Kim had each side of the wrapper pinched between dexterous fingers on each hand and started peeling back the crinkly, transparent covering to reveal a rectangular prism, parallel polygons on all sides. Kim counted them all, as Kim was wont to do when seeing polygons.
Kim popped the candy into their mouth and sucked on it, watching people walk by—some towards the museum, some away, some engaged in activities that had nothing to do with a long-dead artist and the structure that now housed and promoted his work.
Ten minutes later, when the candy was no more, Kim took out the mobile phone and called Chris.
"I'm done here," Kim announced.
It was not yet proper morning time in New York City, a fact that Kim knew when placing the call, but didn't worry about. Even disguised as humans, neither of them slept much.
"What do you mean done?" Chris said.
"I'm calling for a pick-up. I've learned everything I needed to know. All that excitement at the beginning? It's all gone. These humans are..."
"Are you still upset over the candy?"
"It's not just candy. It's a jolly rancher. With the most amazing flavor. And now these humans have decreed it will be no more. That's the last bit of news from this crazy place that I can take."
"Okay, okay. How about you come to New York for a while? We're coming up on a most interesting time here where candy availability and consumption goes way up. Maybe you'll find another favorite? Take a holiday here."
Kim considered that for a moment, staring at the Van Gogh museum. Kim had visited that one a few times over the last few years. Kim had also visited the Rembrandt House museum, the Rijksmuseum, the Stedelijk museum, the Hermitage museum, and Kim was pretty sure they’d seen all the others. There was not much left in Amsterdam to see or do that Kim hadn't been able to do already.
"Fine," Kim said. "I'll give New York a shot. But just so you know, if they discontinue anything else I love, I'm officially declaring this planet a lost cause."
That got a chuckle out of Chris. "Once you're here on this side of the planet, I don't think it's going to be hard to find people who'll agree with that. See you later."
Chris ended the communication.
Kim, back at the flat later would have to dig out that other communication device that was normally well hidden to let the folks back home know about this relocation plan. Maybe another year or two on this rocky world and that was it. Maybe Earth, with all its quirks and discontinued candies, still had something worth staying for. With a sigh, Kim stood up to head back to the dump truck. There was half a bag of watermelon jolly ranchers waiting there.
Kim's final thought while walking out of the Museumplein park for the last time: Maybe New York could indeed offer a flavor of life that Amsterdam no longer could.
What did you think of the story?
I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed writing it! And reading it! My fellow BIG Sci-Fi co-hosts and I recorded our readings. Here’s mine:
But please explore the channel and look for the stories by my co-hosts as well.
In future newsletters, right after the story I’ll have a group promo or two that I’m in and one or two other Indie Authors that you should check out. Like this:
And after that bit of promo, (‘cause us Indie Authors need to promote each other — something I’ll talk about as part of the business of being an Indie Author), comes all the stuff for paid subscribers. It’s free today, but won’t be in the future….)
Then I gotta promo myself a little, since I’m an author with 4, soon to be 5, books out there!
Behind the Scenes!
Now, for all the Behind the Scenes good stuff! (This part will be for paid subscribers only in the future… so if you’re not subscribed, click the button now!)
Tuckerizations & Suggestions!
Science fiction invented Tuckerizations. A Tuckerization, derived from writer Wilson Tucker, is the act of using a person’s name in a story.
Paid subscribers will able to submit their name (or a portion of their name) to get “Tuckerized” in an upcoming “Alien in *” story. Starting next newsletter, look to this space for a form to fill out to submit your name.
Similarly, if you want to contribute an element that I must use in one of Alien Kim’s future (or past—we’ll get to Kim’s origin story) flash fiction stories, this is where you’ll see a call for that, too, also in the form of a form!
These are other good (and fun) reasons to subscribe!
Drafting Table:
The ideas and origins of the story…
I don’t know if this is how it happens for anyone else, but for me, once I have an idea pop in my head, I have a hard time veering from it. And when my co-hosts and I settled on our 4 elements to use, the first thing that popped into my head was the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam. I’d visited when I was there in 2005. My memories of the place are pretty dim since that was almost two decades ago!
I went back and looked at some pictures I’d taken on that trip. None were of the museum itself. I remember being inside a large room and I remember seeing paintings of sunflowers and learning a little bit more about the man than I had previously known. I couldn’t for the life of me remember what the museum looked like on the outside.
To the google! You know how they say things like “write what you know”? Well, if that were good writing advice I think the science fiction and fantasy genres wouldn’t exist. I think that saying is more about making sure one writes for authentic emotion and doesn’t necessarily apply to things that we can use the internet to research, like: locations.
After poking around, refreshing myself on my old Amsterdam trip, I was convinced… this is where my story was going to take place. Now I was going to need to fold the other elements in.
At first, I wanted to have my main character have some weird savant-like obsession over polygons and math (and, well, maybe Kim still does). But that would be a side tid-bit, not a main plot point.
If I boiled down all the story/plot advice I’ve ever read or learned into something simple, it would be this: Something bad happens to the MC and then it gets better. Kurt Vonnegut distilled this better than anyone else in his “Shapes of Stories” lecture.
(PS - watermelon is my household’s favorite Jolly Rancher flavor, so I had to use it in this story, even if I upset my hubby for “making it go away”!)
(PPS - this is also where the internet comes in handy to verify things, especially if you’re not overly familiar with a concept or an area. I’m in the US, and what’s a standard dump truck to us isn’t the same as what’s driving around the streets of Amsterdam. I had to make sure that there was at least something similar before I wrote it in!)
MC’s name
My MC (main character) needed a name. For a long time, my default was to write human male characters. I don’t know why. I’m a woman. Why would I write from the POV of a man all the time? Is it because I grew up where reading sci-fi where that was the default? Maybe?
But these days, I’m much more conscious of that and, frankly, am trying to be vague where I can. Especially given the MC in this story is an alien. How could I, or even should I, pick a gender?
I decided to look for gender neutral names and given it was a short story, I figured I could get away with not using any pronouns. (I saw John Scalzi speak a few months ago at the National Book Festival, and he said something similar about the main character, Jamie, in “The Kaiju Preservation Society.” He said that he deliberately didn’t call out Jamie’s gender… although I have my own reasons for thinking that Jamie presents as male. :) )
Honestly, if I were to do something like this in the future, I might write it in first person. It’s hard not to use pronouns when writing in third!
The length
When I challenged my BIG Sci-Fi Podcast co-hosts to create flash fiction and suggested a length of no more than 1000 words, they were like WHOA! They weren’t sure they could contain it to such a short length.
Now, for me, I’ve had a lot of practice doing flash fiction. For a while, I was an active participant in a challenge called “The Iron Writer” (which was inspired by “The Iron Chef”) where we had to write not 1,000 words, but only 500! Now *that’s* a challenge! 1000 feel luxurious to me by comparison. LOL
But here’s the “trick” I use. (This could come in handy because there are several paying markets out there (like Daily Science Fiction) that only do Flash Fiction with strict cut-off lengths.)
(It’s barely a trick… so please don’t get overly excited.)
I don’t worry about length when I’m writing the rough draft. I’ll get the length in the editing. The more you write flash fiction, the more likely you’ll come close to the target without going over.
I actually enjoy writing flash fiction because of the editing part. I find it fascinating to work through a story where every sentence, every word, matters. Novels can get away with a lot that a flash fiction piece can’t.
~ ~ ~
That’s all for today. Depending on the flash fiction piece, what I think is important about it, this section will be wildly different, incorporating thoughts about writing and publishing. I’ll talk about the process of how I wrote and published my 4 (soon to be 5) books and the books I’m actively working on right now.
Like my soon-to-be “old” newsletter, you can always reply via and let me know what you think about any of this! (Or post a comment!)
And like that “old” newsletter, I’m going to employ you amazing readers to take actions like “like” this newsletter and “share” it.
If you celebrate Christmas, then have a merry one! And look for the last of the old newsletter next week, which will have my 2023 book reviews/recommendations.
Now I have to go… apparently, I just committed myself to writing flash fiction every week indefinitely…!
-Adeena
Loved this!
I am absolutely delighted with every aspect of this story and of your explanation. Great work and very creative.