Images of Characters from an Upcoming Book About Mary and an Alien

I was pleasantly surprised at a protest yesterday when the Dropkick Murphies played a couple of songs before heading to their concert. I just wanted to mention that. I feel like the organizers should have mentioned it was going to happen.

Starting in 2023, I've had a goal to self-publish a book every year to make up for the years of my life that I spent procrastinating on my dreams of authorship. Naturally, this year I procrastinated for six months and started making myself write every day on July 1. I'm revisiting an idea I had last year and quickly abandoned for a middle school chapter book because that shouldn't take as long to write as my novel with no particular audience in mind. It's about a kid who lives in Logan, Utah in 1995 and meets an alien who lands in Logan Canyon, combining sci-fi, 90s nostalgia, and the charm of the place I called home for most of my adult life. I still have to do research because I turned two in 1995. What I remember most about it is that "Roll to Me" and "How Bizarre" were constantly on the radio, and "Lamb Chop's Special Chanukah" aired on December 16.

Because I'm pumped about this book but have nothing to show for it, here are pictures of the characters that I asked ChatGPT to draw so I could visualize and describe them better because I'm not a visual thinker. I think these pictures are really cool and want to be associated with them even though I put no real work into them. Because almost nobody reads my blog or my books, I'm going to go all-in on spoilers. (All details subject to change between now and the end of the year.)

Mary Jones

I thought it would be cool if the main character was a kid who wore a baseball cap and rode a skateboard while listening to music like Pepper Roni from the Lego Island franchise (which is technically late 90s/early 00s, but the vibe is close enough). Mary is ostracized at school for loving sci-fi, and for... other reasons. The more she's ostracized, the more she turns to sci-fi as an escape. There is absolutely nothing autobiographical about that whatsoever.

Bonus Picture of Mary

The next time I put in an image prompt, ChatGPT did the Mary prompt again instead. It made a similar error later in the chat. That's never happened to me in any other chat, so it was weird. I like the first picture better because of the jean jacket, but her Walkman in this one looks like a tape player like it's supposed to, so this is another one of life's many tradeoffs.

Toby Jones

I told ChatGPT that the story would open with Mary watching The X-Files (though I've since decided to move that to the second chapter). When I told her she had a little brother, it assumed he would also be watching The X-Files. At that time, I'd only ever seen one episode, but now I've watched most of the first season for research purposes, and I can confidently say there's no way in hell a child Toby's age should be allowed to watch The X-Files. Almost any episode chosen at random would have given me nightmares at his age.

Mr. Jones

Mr. Jones is the fun parent who encourages Mary's quirkiness and indulges her mischief. He's able to be convinced that Kimboo the alien is a boy named BIlly in a very cool costume.

Mrs. Jones

Mrs. Jones is the parent who gets exasperated with Mary and hates sci-fi. That's because, unknown to the rest of the family, she used to work for the CIA and has an unpleasant history with aliens. When Kimboo the alien reaches out to Mary for help, he's actually trying to get her mom. Oops. After the bad aliens capture both of them, they'll work together and repair their strained relationship, and it will be wholesome.

Mac

Mary's basset hound, who would rather sleep on the couch than get dragged into her shenanigans, is named after the alien in Mac and Me, a universally panned knockoff of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. I don't think I'll mention that in the book. It will just be a little Easter egg for a small percentage of nerds.

Mitchell Corbridge

In this book, I'll take a few well-deserved swipes at Mormonism, but look, Mary's best friend is a Mormon. He's the only Mormon who kept being nice to her after she made it clear she wasn't going to convert, and he never tells her that her skin color is because she's descended from Cain and didn't fight valiantly for Jesus before she was born. At first I was thinking the story would star a trio of friends, but the logistics of a duo are simpler. Mitch also likes sci-fi, of course, but he isn't as obsessive as Mary or as ready to believe that a real alien has made contact. (Mary, of course, points out that it's at least as plausible as the Joseph Smith story.)

Kimboo

I wanted the alien Mary meets to resemble the traditional Gray aliens because I also feel nostalgic about those - I think it was in the 90s that I wanted and couldn't have a giant lollipop with the face of one - but with some distinct features. The word "Kimboo" was in my brain one morning as I drifted out of sleep, so I put it to use. Kimboo is one of the last survivors of an interstellar genocide, and he comes to Earth to compile and preserve a record of his people's histories and cultures. He isn't honest about his purpose with Mary, though, because he thinks she's too young to hear about things like genocide. She has some strong opinions about that when she finds out.

David Fotheringham (aka Mr. F)

An artist traumatized the hell out of me once, so one of my characters is a traumatized artist. Mr. F, an art teacher at Mount Logan Middle School, survived conversion therapy at BYU in the 70s, which altered his brain and made him sensitive to the telepathic cries of the alien race being exterminated, which manifest in his art even though he doesn't know what they are. Mary confides in him, and when the CIA come looking for her and Kimboo, they blackmail him with his sexuality, which parents in Utah in the 90s would receive about as well as parents in Florida today. I was going to have him betray her, but that became redundant as the story evolved, so now he resigns. But then he does some cool stuff and gets a happy ending.

"Parents who prefer and a society which prefers male-female marriages and procreation should be able to insist on teachers and youth leaders who will teach and demonstrate (or at least not contradict) those values.

"For the reasons suggested above, arguments for job discrimination against homosexuals are strongest in those types of employment and activities that provide teaching, association and role models for young people. This would include school teachers (especially at the elementary and secondary levels), and youth leaders and counselors (such as scoutmasters, coaches, etc.)." - Dallin H. Oaks, the next presumptive Mormon prophet

​Fuck Dallin H. Oaks.

Susan Wilcox

Susan is a professor in USU's Center for Atmospheric and Space Sciences. She has progressed in her career despite Mormon prophet Ezra Taft Benson giving his talk "To the Mothers in Zion" around the time she got accepted into graduate school, which isn't a big plot point like Mr. F's conversion therapy trauma, but I'll still shoehorn it in because fuck Ezra Taft Benson. She met Mary at one of the observatory's public viewing nights. She's a mentor who encourages Mary's intelligence and curiosity but then sells Kimboo out to the CIA for fortune and glory. I'm undecided whether she'll redeem herself. I told ChatGPT to make her look evil, but not too evil.

Susan was the second time ChatGPT accidentally redid the same prompt when I put in another one, but I don't like the other picture of her enough to bother with it. She has ChatGPT's "generic grumpy middle-aged female professor" look. Uh, no, I haven't requested a lot of images of that sort of thing, why do you ask?

Arlene

Arlene has her own history with aliens, which, like Mary's mom, she didn't enjoy. She sees through Kimboo's disguise when he attends ConChord 11, a real-life filk convention that I get to research, with Mary. She doesn't like sci-fi, but she goes to filk conventions because she's really into fantasy. I don't know why, but I think Arlene is a perfect name for an old lady with pagan vibes. An old lady named Arlene lived upstairs from me in 1995, but this isn't her, I don't think.

The Hl'Vurg Commander

The nameless leader of the forces pursuing Kimboo in a campaign to erase all memory of his people from the galaxy. Making them insectoid may have been a mistake. I want to be clear in the story that they are not emotionless or a hive mind. I don't want to shy away from the reality that Earthlings who commit genocide in real life are generally normal, complex people who know exactly what they're doing, so these aliens are the same. (And of course, not all Hl'Vurgs participate in or agree with it.) The commander is calm, intelligent, charming, and fanatically devoted to his cause. In the story, I will imply that there's a nuanced political history behind his cause but that it's irrelevant because nothing makes genocide okay.