June 14, 2021
Write a top 10 list in the voice of a character. Is your character a person making a bucket list? How about someone listing their greatest fears? What does the list they make say about the character?
I knew this one was going to be tough from the moment I posted it. Most of my major characters live for the moment and don’t make bucket lists, so I decided I’d do it from the voice of one of my secondary characters. Folks, meet Lando Soldati.
Lando is a tall, lanky programmer at Shifter Technologies, and one of the first employees hired by Eli Hennessey. He’s smart but doesn’t take life seriously, which makes him the perfect sidekick for Eli., who has a habit of overthinking things. Lando changes his hair color regularly, and his favorite accessory is a bright red mohawk hairpiece.
Now for his bucket list, in his words and in no particular order:
- Win a prize at the San Diego Comic Con. I need to come up with something besides one of the Avengers because there’s so much competition. Maybe Warpath? Or Dr. Who?
- Write a program that Eli can’t find any flaws in. No matter how good I think am, he always finds a way to make my coding better. One day, I’d like to match his skill.
- Buy a house. Living in an apartment has its advantages – I don’t have to worry about maintenance – but I’d like to have a place where I don’t have to listen to the neighbor’s baby crying at 3 in the morning.
- Travel to both the North and South Poles. Weird, but blame it on Mrs. Pascarella and learning about Roald Amundsen in fourth grade.
- Find a woman who will put up with me. I never thought much about it until I saw Eli and Harmony together. I’d like to have that kind of relationship with someone.
- Design a game. Not necessarily to sell, just to say I did it. Bragging rights. I love to play them, so why not create one?
- Convince Harmony to go to a Comic Con with me. She’d make a great Spitfire.
- Visit the Oregon Coast. The one time I was there, I was too busy working to enjoy it, and barely got to see the redwoods in Northern California. I’d like to drive the entire coastal highway.
- While I’m at it, I should take a trip to Silicon Valley and soak up the techy atmosphere. Not that I’d want to live there, but it would be fun to visit. I wonder how much time off I can talk Eli into letting me take?
- I can win any cops and robbers computer game that’s made. I spend all day writing code for police departments but I’ve never got to hang out with actual cops. Some day, I’d like to do a ride-along with police officers in real life and see them in action.
And that’s Lando for you. Sweet guy who hasn’t got life figured out yet, but is working on it. I’ve tried giving him his own love interest a time or two, but it’s never worked out.
Don’t forget to check out the lists from the other authors on the hop. You can find them by following the links below.
As always, until next time, please stay safe!
June 14, 2021
Write a top 10 list in the voice of a character. Is your character a person making a bucket list? How about someone listing their greatest fears? What does the list they make say about the character?
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We often see similar bright red Mohawk hairpieces at the festivals we go to. We call them ‘Mullets’ over here or ‘Mohicans’.
Mullets in the US are defined differently. They are business (short) in the front and party (long) in the back.
Great insight into the character. Not only that, number 8 is on my real-life list too!
I used to live on the southern Oregon coast. I never had the money to do all the exploring I wanted. Maybe someday!
I did San Jose in the early 80s. My daughter was born at Kaiser in Santa Clara. We used to have to roll the sleeping bums away from the door at Guitar Center in downtown SJ across the street from the infamous St. James Park.. When my wife was pregnant as a house we used to go downtown to El Rebozo’s. By the time we left I’d hold her hand when she had to jump the little pee rivers from the passed out drunks. The Cholos, the low riders, the charm is all gone. Every chunk of space is used up and built over. My gig at Sequential Circuits was way out on First St at the time. North of the bridge San Rafael was a quiet little town. Now it’s a suburb. There’s rush hour traffic on the One outside Marin. Last time I was in the hose it was a nightmare. But you can’t beat the weather! Unless you’re there during the garlic festival in Morgan Hill and the wind is out of the south… And #10? When seconds count the cops are only minutes away. But a Joe Friday ride along to deal with street whackos would be fun!
I did a ride-along once when I was a reporter. Convinced me our community had at least one too many cops. There were three on duty and with an open radio, I could hear they were wandering around in their cars looking for trouble to stir up, rather than dealing with actual crime. And, mind you, they knew I was there. Since I covered the cop shop routinely, I knew there was real crime to deal with, so I was skeptical as to why they were harassing kids hanging out in the park. Yeah, they were breaking curfew. Big whoop! How about dealing with the rapes and burglaries that you never seem to investigate?
I am of two minds when I hear “first responder”. Fire (persons) show up, walk through fire, save lives. Police show up after whatever has already happened and mop up. They might get shot at by someone who has already committed a home invasion. They prevent very little until they have time to set up for a barricaded nutcase. It’s always easier to write a female SUV driver a ticket than go crimebusting. Why there’s so much catch and release in the criminal justice system is appalling.
I worked for a law enforcement agency many years ago. The way some cops manipulate the system is crazy. They tried to hit a 6 year old boy with a felony charge when he grabbed a bag of candy from a classmate. Thankfully, the DA shot it down.
Crazy…
I agree. Firemen are in the top 10 most dangerous jobs in America. Cops don’t even break the top 20. My husband, an inside wireman electrician scores 6, just below firemen at 5. Yet, cops are always squawking about how dangerous their jobs are. Well, not according to the actuarial tables. And the US Supreme Court ruled a long time ago that cops have no expectation to prevent crime or even to stop it while in progress. They can legally remain outside the school or mall while it is being shot up by an active shooter and they’re “doing their job.” That’s one reason why I’m a big believer in concealed carry. The concealed carry citizen may well be the only one who can stop a mass shooter or a robbery in progress because cops are under no obligation to do so. I think cops should have to stop crimes where there are actual victims if at all possible for them to do so, but that’s not the scenario we currently have. On the other hand, I think we criminalize an awful lot of stuff that arent’ real crimes — like drugs and prostitution and texting while driving. I personally don’t like drugs or prostitution, but it not for me to decide morally objectionable activity should be a crime and if you can text while driving without hitting someone, then there’s no victim and therefore, no crime. But that’s a libertarian take on things.
I love my country but as you say sometimes America gets too caught up in legislating morality instead of dealing with the issues. There are those, including cops, who aren’t big fans of concealed carry but in Texas a 58 year old grandmother is more likely than a cop to aerate a burglar or purse snatcher.
Exactly. Here in Alaska, you’ll wait 10 minutes to 4 hours for a cop to show up at your door if you call 911 — assuming you have cell service. You’re long dead even with the 10 minute wait. Hence, we have constitutional carry, stand-your-ground and a strong castle-doctrine. And a pretty low crime rate — drug use/sale and rape excepted. We had a “mass shooting” the other day in Anchorage (our largest city). It was our first in about 30 years and the details are slowly coming out – it wasn’t a random event. Everybody knew everybody and the shooter (while absolutely wrong to do what he did) had legitimate grievances against the people he killed. Meanwhile, a couple of months ago, a concealed carry citizen stopped a robbery in progress where there was a potential for a half-dozen people to be killed or injured. Do you give up that ability to save legitimately innocent lives so that you can save some other lives of questionable innocence. I say “no”. I’ll continue to carry concealed and nobody will know I’m armed until and unless I encounter a reason to draw my weapon in defense of myself or others.
Texas just adopted constitutional carry but they keep messing with the castle law. I have an LTC, the new version of concealed carry. Idiots are jumping out of crs and stealing people’s dogs!
I mostly own guns because of the bears, but they serve a dual purpose for bad guys (and gals). My mom dissuaded three rapists from forcing their way into our house when I was in junior high. We know they were rapists because they broke into our neighbor’s house after they left ours. Mr. P wasn’t similarly armed, so his daughter suffered what Mom spared me from. I’ve only ever used my gun as a signal — like when the neighbor (different neighborhood, decades apart) was beating his wife on the front lawn and none of the men in the neighborhood came out of their houses (my husband was working somewhere). I donned my shoulder rig and went up to their fence and asked her if she wanted to come with me or let him beat her to death. She thought I looked pretty good. I’m a small woman, but I guess the 357 under my arm made me look formidable — same gun my mom brandished against the rapists, actually. Cops showed up (because we called them) nearly a half-hour after I rescued her. The local newspaper praised me (without ID because I didn’t consent) for being a good neighbor.
Any gun, if you’re staring down at the business end, looks like a cannon. Good work. I firmly believe that citizens are going to have to police since the cops can’t.
They can’t, they won’t. Most people in Alaska already do the policing because they’re too far away to respond in time. We manage pretty well. I think Americans in general will be surprised at how their lives will be better without cops on every corner enforcing laws that aren’t even, in many cases, crimes. They’ve just been declared illegal.
My husband did a stint as a mall cop and wasn’t allowed to carry any weapons. He’s told me a few stories about stopping folks with weapons, and then there a few he won’t tell me. I’m glad he isn’t doing that job anymore.
Yeah. It’s a horrible feeling when you’re unarmed in a situation where someone wants to harm you. That was one of my biggest problems when working at the community mental health center. If somebody truly wanted to hurt us, there was nothing we could do about it besides lob copies of the DSM-V at their head.
Meanwhile, the cops in my town won’t investigate a burglary, which is an actual crime – stealing someone’s stuff violates their right to their property. https://medium.com/common-sense-now/welcome-to-prison-planet-724f1961e00f
It’s like the Joni Mitchell song…they paved paradise and put up a parking lot