N: Neal McBride

My reference photo for Neal McBride: Paul Bettany

I chat with my characters to learn about them and their part in the story -- and to work out some aspects of world-building. (My side of the conversation is in italics)

Neal McBride is one of the POV characters in my sci-fi novel Course Corrections. 

He was part of a gang -- whether terrorists or freedom fighters depends on who you ask -- that was captured, some of them killed, a few escaped. Neal stood trial and was sentenced to prison and Parathena "therapy" to re-shape his personality into something more "acceptable."

I wrote about some of these ideas in this post here and this post on SiMF.

The concept behind the Parathena therapy was using drugs to manipulate the emotional content of your memories. 

Stripped out the anger that drove me. Once the "McBride Terror" got rolling, we fed off each other. Glenna's anger, mine, Maggie's, everyone who joined our team. Remembering all that would've kept me going for years.

And if they were able to biochemically pinpoint the emotions triggered by those memories and replace them with...

Sadness. Emptiness.

But they didn't erase the memories entirely. 

Year's worth of lost memories would be strange. Something I could wonder about, try to find out what happened, then get angry all over that it was taken away. 

And you would've known who erased the memories, because you remember the sentencing, the imprisonment. 

Maybe erase those too. Though how to explain many years gone from my head, then?

You were in a coma for years? 

Living out on Jupiter's moons, and there are still mysterious comas that last years? Who'd have paid for my upkeep all that time?

True, Maggie was gone. 

And Glenna's dead.

Are you angry about that, still? 

(He shakes his head.) They took my anger.


Stay tuned for the P entry, when I'll post the first scene from Course Corrections (and my fantasy monstrosity, Disciple) so you can see a little of what happened to Neal.