Ok, I'll admit it. I love Captain Lafayette "Fate" Rhys. In fact, I love him so much that I have decided to start writing a serial following the exploits and hi-jinks in which he and his crew often find themselves. Right now, I am working my way through a standard writing plan and am creating character profiles for each of the crew members. This part is so much fun! I feel like I am meeting new people through this exercise. I have a basic crew roster, and I have to fill it with characters that are interesting, engaging, and yet at the same time realistic. Their conflicts are going to be both physical and psychological. They will all be a part of me, part of people I may know, and part of people I would like to know. I want to tell you more in-depth information about each one, but that will have to wait for a later step. Right now, I can tell you this: the head biologist is guilt-ridden, driven, and also the ship's volunteer yoga instructor. She is innovative when it comes to getting the most out of the ship's gardens and life support systems, but spends most of her time researching an elusive cure to a puzzling disease. The ship's chef is the descendant of influential colony designers, but has established himself on his own merits, as one of the best and most innovative chefs in the Fleet. He is also the author of many trashy, tragic romance novels that he writes under a pen name, much to the chagrin of his family.

I have discovered that these two characters will work closely together, since they are both responsible in part for the crew's food supply. How closely is yet to be determined, but here's another little tidbit for you. The chef is the second best yogi on board.

The Astronaut Is A Farmer

Instructions:

Imagine a character very like you but give him or her a dramatic external alteration. You might make the character the opposite sex, for example, or make them significantly older or younger. You choose.

Now write a brief character sketch in which you reveal the character's appearance, their feelings about it, and their current circumstances. Use a third-person narrator (‘he’ or ‘she’).

She looked out of the window, across fields windswept with thin snow. The harvest had been in the barn for over a month now, and everyone was indoors, playing board games or reading books to pass the time. Although her son had build a substantial fire, and the indoor thermometer showed a temperature above 80 degrees, she could not seem to shake the chill that rattled her bones. She tightened her grasp on the blanket that was draped around her shoulders while the gathering dusk crept in from the forest. As the darkness grew deeper outside, her reflection became more obvious. She looked at her white hair and thought of all of the women that had gone before her. Everyone in her family had hair the color of the snow on the ground outside. Unlike them, she chose to wear hers long. It fell to the middle of her back, as it had her entire adult life.  Her granddaughter French braided it for her every morning so that it would not hamper her activities.  The elderly woman spent most of her days tending the plants kept alive in the greenhouse. While her contributions to the family's food stores certainly did not decide life or death for the group at large, the group knew that it may have meant life or death for her, and encouraged her to stay active. She puttered around the large glass-encased paradise, checking the moisture level of the soil. She put the fruit and vegetable scraps into a blender, then poured the contents into the worm bins. The choice pieces went to the chickens. Nothing was wasted; everything had to be recycled and reused. She snipped dead flowers off of the stalks and dried herbs on racks in the warmest corner. Sometimes she napped on a bench in the weak winter sun, warmed by the insulating glass panes and the radiant-heat flooring. The family dogs always stood guard for her. If the children were busy with schoolwork, the dogs assumed their role of grandma watcher. She had very little real privacy, but she did not mind so much. What did she have to keep private? There were no secrets worth having anymore, since her family had taken up residence on this desolate little farm on a small planet, far from the warm blue world she had called home.

She sighed and looked away from the old woman in the window, and took in the room. It was a scene much like what her grandparents would have recalled from their childhood, with a few technological differences. A fire was blazing in a stove that radiated heat both from its sides and into pipes that heated the floors, inside and out in the greenhouse. Children were huddled with games or books around small areas of concentrated light, almost like candles. These were not candles though. These were solar-powered lights that sat in the windows during the day, gathering strength against the long darkness. This was another of her daily duties, collecting the torches and replacing them in their "chargers" in the morning. The children were quietly going about their activities, their parents reading or doing small, simple tasks like mending clothes or tools. The dogs were asleep next to the heater, the warmest place in the house. Everything was peaceful.  She closed her eyes, and drifted off into sweet dreams of Earth summer.