‘My Alien Wife’ – and Critiquing Crusaders!

M is for…

Before I get to part 13 of the A-Z challenge… (halfway through, whoo-hoo!) I’d like to share a little crusader thing. It occured to me last weekend, that there are probably a lot of crusaders who’d like to form writer’s groups or do critique exchanges, and so I’m stepping up to volunteer as a facilitator/organizer, if anybody trusts me with something like that. Head over here to sign up if you have any interest.

Now… ‘My Alien Wife’ is one of my favorite Roswell fan fiction stories that I’ve ever written. It was inspired by a challenge from the Roswell Fanatics forum – ‘They did WHAT in Vegas? Pick one of the canon couples and write a story where they wake up and find out that they’ve gotten married in a Vegas wedding chapel.’

I played around with that challenge concept a little, partly because I thought the cliche bit about two people getting married in Vegas after getting too drunk to remember it was particularly inappropriate for the alcohol-intolerant alien hybrids of Roswell, New Mexico – I included a little bit of alcohol to lower the inhibitions of my lead characters, Kyle Valenti and Tess Harding, but I took three fairly long chapters in getting them to the chapel altar – setting the stage for two young people who’d already been romantically involved, had it fall apart, and left their friends on a Spring Break trip to see if they could try to rekindle the passion. This part of the story also involves crazy dares, video games, and room service pizza.

And then, once Kyle and Tess have taken the plunge and become husband and wife, things get a little more complicated. First they end up back with the other regulars from the show, for the rest of the trip, and Tess starts to get cold feet, while Kyle decides that marrying Tess is the best thing he’s ever lucked into and does his best to persuade her to stick with it. Then, when they return home to New Mexico, there are a lot of awkward adjustments and their marriage faces the worst crisis yet.

That’s about it. It’s a fun story concept that I think I implemented in words about as well as I can think of, and I’m very grateful to ‘killjoy’ for having thrown out that challenge. There’s a friend of mine who’s been bugging me for a sequel, but I don’t know… somehow I’m not sure that what comes next is as exciting, and I’d rather not ‘go back to the well’ unless I can see a story that inspires me as much.