Behind the Scenes of
1. Another Place and Time
by Denise Felt 2011

I have no idea where this story came from!  Late one night, I was minding my own business thinking about writing a sequel to another series of stories I’d written, when wham!  I saw Straker at a studio party against his will.  When suddenly he sees something so bizarre that he has to check it out.  And this story followed.  I got most of the way through the story before life intervened in the form of a major betrayal by someone I considered a good friend, then the even more important betrayal of my husband of fifteen years.  In spite of those setbacks, I did eventually come back to this story, and surprisingly, when I did I knew just where to go to finish it out.  Almost as if it had been waiting patiently for me until I was in a position to continue.  God, I love writing!

Chapter 1 – The tale begins with Straker yelling at his best friend.  Not that he’s really mad at Alec.  After all, the colonel just saved his life and took a bullet meant for him.  But because Alec’s laid up in the hospital, Straker is the one forced to attend a studio function.  And he hates those!  Somehow I have no difficulty believing that he would hate the whole celebrity thing.  He’s a soldier, not a prima donna!  But because he goes – even grumbling and complaining – he meets a very intriguing woman with a certain strangeness about her.  She has a visible aura around her.

Chapter 2 – I had a lot of fun writing their conversations.  Mila is a photographer (a profession I know a few things about, since I’m one too), and she sees the world in a way that Straker finds very interesting, even when he’s not sure he agrees with her.  His logic comes up against her more elemental beliefs, and ultimately he’s left stunned when she disappears in front of him.  My beta tester was very pleased when I finished this story, since she thought Mila was one of the coolest females I’ve ever written!

Chapter 3 – We find Straker the next day rather distracted when he visits his friend, and he eventually makes the mistake of mentioning that he met a woman at the party.  And Alec panics!  In the series, it’s such a rarity for Straker to have any personal dealings with women – and certainly women in the studio – that it’s easy to see why his friend finds this information worrisome.  His friendship toward the commander has always seemed to me to be like a slightly older brother, protecting his younger, more idealistic sibling. 

Straker goes back to the studio and finds someone who can help him debunk what he saw the night before.  A special effects man.  But the major (who I named Burton after Tim Burton) can’t help him, except to steer him toward someone in a different profession.  A magician.

And so we watch as Straker does his best to find a solution other than what he actually saw.  But not only is the magician no help to him, he then realizes that Alec is having him followed.  I really wanted to have him struggle to come up with any scenario – no matter how weird – to combat what he knows happened.  It’s not so much that he’s stubborn (although he is) as it is that he just doesn’t want to have to accept another life-changing truth.  The one about aliens attacking Earth had been more than enough for one lifetime.  And hopefully the reader can sympathize with him, even though they know he can’t run from the truth forever.

The chapter ends with a UFO alert and subsequent hunt when it’s only damaged before it lands.  I don’t spend a lot of time explaining why the commander leaves the search in the hands of Foster and Lake, but I hope enough is clear that he trusts them to handle it without him.  His actions are explained a little further in the second story, but I didn’t feel that it was important to stress them at this point in the tale.

Chapter 4 – Straker visits Alec again, and we find out that he’s not as worried about Mila’s motives as his friend is.  He’s more concerned with why the aliens seem to be targeting urban areas.

The scene shifts to Blackpool, where Col. Foster is searching for the downed UFO.  He shows some of his leadership skills in the way he’s handling things, but later he shows us that he’s still the Paul we know from the series in his attitude toward the pretty major assigned to assist him at the command post.

When we return to the hospital the next day, Alec finds out that Straker had a talk with his parents that led to surprising news.  Alec suspects an intricate plot when he finds out that Mila knew the truth even though the military had never heard of it.  And Straker is finally showing the reader how he feels about all this.  He’s mad as hell!

The chapter ends with Paul relaying the good news that the UFO is destroyed.  Straker definitely needed to hear some good news today!

Chapter 5 – Two days later Straker finds out he has to handle Alec’s writers meeting.  Then he learns that Mila wants to see him.  Well, being Straker he fully intends to handle both situations with a firm hand.  He does well with the writers, threatening them into working together.  But Mila is a different matter, isn’t she?  And he can no longer deny her words when he sees her again, because she still has that aura!

Matt was impressed with the way Uphorians studied people (as opposed to Earthlings, who take blood samples of everything!)  I have good friends who are Native Americans, and I drew a lot from their lives and beliefs for this series.  They’re just so much more in touch with the spiritual side of things than the rest of us.  Straker goes with her, unknowingly shocking his security men (and Miss Ealand) in the process.

I always loved the sentient planet in the Star Trek episode “Shore Leave” and felt that the episode didn’t really ever examine how wonderful the planet really was.  So in this story I have Uphoria be a planet like that one, a place where your thoughts become reality.  It seemed to fit in well with Straker’s wonderful self-control – and even to help explain why he is so stoic.

I think it’s funny that Straker gets so focused on what he’s doing that he doesn’t realize its effect on the rest of the world around him.  So Mila has to be the one to tell him that there will probably be rumors about the two of them now.  He’s instantly apologetic, but she only laughs.  It was good to get the chance to show that she isn’t too worried about appearances either.

When she tells him that his memories of Uphoria probably influenced his creation of the park, we get to learn one of the major themes for this series: the heart knows more than the mind.  This is a theme I use often in my stories, but here we really get to delve into its meaning.

A few readers remarked that it was intriguing how Uphorians traveled between worlds.  One of my Native American friends taught me years ago how alive trees truly are.  He’s a tree hugger in the literal sense.  He likes to touch them, opening his heart to their being.  I understood where he was coming from, even though I never took my love of trees that far.  But in this story the things he taught me I used as the key to moving between worlds.  I love the whole idea of it – and wish it would work for me!

I ended the story on a cliffhanger, but knew that I was heading right into the second half of the story.  So those readers who complained at the ending wouldn’t have long to wait for the sequel.  See how thoughtful I was? *grin*

Actually, I'm trying to get caught up!  I am seriously behind!  And I'm hoping by going over these stories and rereading them, I'll get back into the feel of the UFO-verse.  Here's hoping!