The story follows The Ambassador, her friends, and her team as they look for ways to stop the invading Olmeri. The Ambassador is a highly respected older woman, not another Captain or Lost Renegade. She is not a broken relic looking for redemption. She’s good at what she does. Very good. She is slightly snarky, really likes coffee, is an adept in the martial arts, speaks multiple languages, and keeps lots of secrets. She’s still got game but she’s not a ‘young vixen’ any more. She’d like to retire. She can’t. The High Council has summoned her for a difficult new mission.
The Ambassador is low-concept, realistic and grounded. It combines the humanity of the original Star Trek with the expert teamwork of the original Mission: Impossible, magical swords and jewels from Tolkien and Stargate, mystical lore from Chinese martial arts, and characters who would be at home in Mayberry.
It’s a comfortable adventure in a world where excellence is expected, integrity and honor matter, trust is earned, wits matter more than firepower, friends are the best, everybody gets a seat at the table, and the good guys win most of the time. It crosses generations and cultures, East and West. It’s new and fresh and old and full of all sorts of hooks and turns. Always another secret to be revealed. It’s not the same and it is exactly the same. It will make you smile, cry a little, and smile again. It’s normal, mostly.
The Ambassador and her team don’t save the universe. They try to do good. Sometimes they succeed. Sometimes they fail. They are excellent at what they do. They are brilliant and humble, honest and kind. They are mostly regular, normal, outwardly average, incredibly interesting, quietly extraordinary people.
Teamwork, Family, Old Friends, New Friends
The characters, scenes, dialog, and settings are all intended to be reminiscent of a past that never existed in a future we can only hope for. The contrast between old and new, familiar and strange, past and future tugs at who the characters are and what they do.
Having a meal together, making more room at the table, and taking care of each other are recurring scenarios. Each time, there is something more revealed in the conversation, just like around an old-fashioned family dinner table. The hope that comes from having a hot meal or a friend come to visit is universal. The idea behind these scenes is to remind how nice it can be to share a meal with goods friends.
In the story and in parallel with the real world, agriculture and trade are the primary basis for interactions with other worlds. The Ambassador is a skilled trade negotiator. Her particular emphasis is agribusiness. She negotiates multi-year shipments of all sorts of food products, addresses equipment and support needs, and looks for ways to develop more agricultural trade in the Local Neighborhood.
Fight scenes are focused on protecting and defending, not attacking. Training scenes reflect the teachings and philosophy of the traditional internal arts. Being able to win without fighting is ideal (Sun Zi). But if you have to fight, being highly effective is essential. To accomplish this, preparation, training and regular practice are required.
The environments and locations in the story are more or less familiar to the characters. They don’t consider what they are doing all that exceptional even though others do. To them, flights among the stars are not that much different than a routine trip on a private jet or a well-appointed yacht. But they are not tourists and their adventures are far from routine.
Growing up and Growing old
The characters look for ways to understand each other and the situation with the Olmeri. But a solution to the problem with the Olmeri isn’t the goal for the stories. The goal for the stories is to reveal how the characters think, how they work through the questions, and how they learn to work together. They develop their relationships with themselves and each other in the process.
How we learn and grow as human beings, as students, and as teachers are key to the interactions and many of the conversations the characters have. The older ones remember and recognize they are older. They gently say goodbye to the generation before. The middle group is experienced, capable and strong. The younger ones are able and quick to learn.
Finding New Perspectives
The story spans multiple generations and includes characters from several generations. They each have a particular perspective depending on their race, origins, and age. Those differences are something they respect and appreciate. As it turns out, the perspective of the youngest generation provides one of the solutions. Perspective, who we are, how we look at a problem, how we look at others, and how we look at ourselves are recurring scenarios.
So many of us these days are running on empty. Tomorrow is so close and so far away. The world is on the brink of change and we don’t know what it is. We’d like a little less tension and anxiety. Crying is okay, but we’d like to smile maybe a little more. We want something familiar and comforting to hold on to. Something that we can relate to. Something that isn’t about everything and everyone being broken.
We want heroes who could be us.
Concept art by Rick Lundeen
GENRE: Sci-fi/Adventure/Martial Arts/Hopepunk (PG)
NUTSHELL: Jacqueline Chan and the Little Rascals meet Andy Taylor in space
LOGLINE: An accomplished older woman leads a tight-knit team to protect the Local Neighborhood. Together, they must find a way to stop the invading Olmeri.