What’s New in FabianSpace

Last month, I said I was pretty much done with standup. That lasted all of a week. One of my comedy buddies and I went to a kava bar open mic night. Open mic is where they let anybody try comedy for 5 minutes. I had a routine all set up and at 3 am, I woke up with a revelation. The place was called TyEd’s Teahouse, but is pronounced Tides! So I rewrote the routine, thought I was funny, almost chickened out, went anyway (because of comedy buddy), and ended up having a great time.

See me in action!

BTW, the brown-hand street joke was a callback to an earlier comic who was talking about all the black people living in Clearwater. I had originally intended to say it was my proctologist’s street. Alas, most of the audience was too young to know what a proctologist is.

Let’s talk about more funny business – Space Traipse!

A Deep Dive into Space Traipse: Hold My Beer

If you love Star Trek and parodies… If the Orville and Galaxy Quest give you as much joy as Wrath of Khan… If you believe (as Tumblr users do) that humans will rule the galaxy because we are the only species crazy enough to tie two warp cores together, reverse the polarity and toss them into a star just to see what will happen… then this is the book for you. These are the voyages of the HMB Impulsive.

Right now, the series has six books and two Vella serial stories. I’ve also had a few stories published in various anthologies. The next “Season,” as I call the story collections, comes out in May.

Why did I start writing Star Trek parody?

It was late 2018, and our lives were stressful. Plus, I was out of love with writing. I was angry that my books didn’t sell. Vern’s “origin story” was going woefully bad. I snapped. I decided that if I was not going to be a commercial success, I was just going to have fun and who cares if it’s any good or not.

About that time, a Tumblr meme was going around about how humans ruled the Federation because we were the only species reckless enough to throw a warp core into a star just to see what would happen, create a rift into a mirror universe, then go into the mirror universe and steal another warp core to put things back. Or somesuch. I thought, “I could totally write that crew!”

I started it on my blog. I had one rule: a section a week. It did not have to be good. It did not have to follow any conventions about voice or plotting or even grammar. It would be offensive to the woke if that’s what I felt would be funniest. I broke the fourth wall, added videos when I didn’t want to describe a scene (and turned it into a funny aside), and basically let chaos reign.

I hadn’t had so much fun in ages.

Of course, the blog barely got any attention. *shrug* but then someone said they wished they didn’t have to wait a week for the next installment. So in 2019, I decided to compile them into collections and publish them. That was really the launch of my self-publishing career as Laser Cow Press.

Who are my favorite characters?

I love them all! Here are a few. I'll share others later.

Lt. Enigo LaFuentes: I wanted a Chief of Security who was totally not afraid to get into a scrap and who came from a rough place like Lt Yar (ST: TNG). But instead of a planet run by gangs, he was on a generation ship, the UGS Hood, which got lost and degenerated into gangs. I’ve been playing the best and the worst clichés of East LA. Enigo is a pit bull – fierce, loyal, and a big sweetheart in his own way.

Lt. Ellie Doall: Ellie started out as a Harry Kim (ST:VOY). Young and super-smart, able to do anything and generally feeling like she needed to. Like Harry, she was an ensign for way too long. I didn’t know why she was such a miracle worker until I wrote Doall’s Do-Over. I think she’s done the most growing in the series, and she wants a spinoff with her Toddybear.

Ensign Gel: Dawn Grimes, my cover artist, gave me the idea for a gelatinous creature long before The Orville created Yaphit. With the ability to absorb punishment and then absorb his enemies, he was perfect for security. He came into his own when I decided to do the pon farr episode, and he was the only alien on the ship. He’s a great combination of naivety and savvy.

Doc Sorcha: I totally wanted an alternative to the Doctor from ST:VOY. Doc Sorcha is also a photonic being, but unlike the Doctor who wants to be human, she thinks that’s a ridiculous waste of potential. It’s so much fun to write in her POV, which is just a little condescending. She’s kind of the Vern of the Space Traipse world, but less grumpy and noirish.

How do I come up with the plots?

A lot of times, I swipe them right from Star Trek. Did you know most of the scripts are online? I watch the episode, then pull the script and have it on one screen as I write on the other. I have to consider which characters are going to replace the ones in the show. It’s not always a direct correlation. For example, in Space Traipse 6, I’m parodying “What Little Girls Are Made Of,” which stars Nurse Chapel, Captain Kirk, Spock, and two redshirts (RIP). Lt. Misha Rosien, the botanist, takes Chapel’s place, and while Jeb is in Kirk’s spot, Gel is the redshirt. (He gets tossed off the cliff, but there’s no killing a gelatinous creature that easily.)

Once I have the characters, I put them in the situation and let them run. They do not follow the script, and I would never ask them to. They do as their personalities dictate. Misha, for example, had no interest in her fiancé, who’d been declared dead four years earlier and was trying to find a way to save the captain.

Sometimes, the script is just a starting point. In Doall’s Do-Over, I was parodying the Star Trek Animated story where Spock was erased from history and had to go back in time to save his life. It’s a heartfelt episode, but saving your own life isn’t nearly funny enough, so Ellie had to go prevent herself from falling in love with the wrong guy and breaking the entire universe because she was unhappy in her marriage.

A few are mash-ups, like "Lone Star" (Star Trek meets Dallas) and "Erst Bound and Down" (Star Trek meets Smokey and the Bandit). Finally, some are their own stories based on ideas, like “The Highest Form of Motivation” where they “rescue” Loreli from the Cybers. (In ST:TNG, they had to rescue Picard from the Borg. That’s about where the analogy ends.)

What’s next for the Impulsive crew?

I’m not sure. Finding Loreli ends a huge story arc. I am trying to decide what the next big adventures are. I know in the very long term, Enigo will unify and captain the Hood, Ellie and Todd will be on a family ship (with the most precocious kids), and Jeb will have married Katika and they are both admirals. But I’m still having too much fun with them at this stage, so that may be a few years in my future as well as theirs.