Authorpreneur Dashboard – Alianne Donnelly
Wolfen
Science Fiction & Fantasy
Man’s quest for genetic perfection has led to the creation of new subspecies. Wolfen were the pinnacle of scientific achievement, redefining the limits of what it means to be human. Their counterparts, in turn, grew into the ultimate predators. Incapable of higher thought, converts were unstoppable in their need to breed and devour, and when they escaped, they brought the world to its knees. In the game of survival, Wolfen were created to be champions. No longer. The enemy keeps evolving, rendering old tactics ineffective, and the only rule left is to endure at any cost.
Book Bubbles from Wolfen
Pack Comes First. Always.
It's the nature of converts to destroy. It's the nature of Wolfen to protect. It's the nature of humans to corrupt anything they create for their own needs. But they failed with these two. Oh, how they failed...
Rock Bottom
WOLFEN is written mostly in third person past tense but has small pieces written in first person present tense. It was a deliberate choice on my part, and this is why. Those little pieces, this entire chapter included, would never have had the same impact if they were written any other way. And as it is written now, this particular chapter honestly needs no additional commentary, which may be what I love most about it.
Incongruent Goodness
Sinna's goodness seems so out of place among all the other survivors, but there's a reason for that: it throws into stark relief the smallest instances of evil, malice, and violence inherent in those who have become numb to it. She's like a constant, walking, talking reminder to everyone who sees her that we used to be kinder once, gentler. But it does get her into trouble quite often. As Bryce points out, being "good" puts you at a disadvantage in this world. It makes you prey.
A Hint of Things Past
Beginning the story of WOLFEN after most of the apocalyptic dust had settled was a conscious and deliberate choice on my part. I didn't want to write another version of a story already told a million times; I wanted something new. But that back story of WHAT happened and HOW was always there in the back of my mind, and hints like these showed up here and there to begin painting a picture of what Project Delta-Omega was really about. As terrible as the monsters are, it turns out they're merely a physical manifestation of their creators' minds.
A New Identity
A pivotal point for one of the main characters. Ever notice how terms of endearment can sometimes come off rather cruel? Difficult enough to know that it no longer matters "who" you used to be, only "what" you are now, but when you have no idea "who" or "what" you really were to begin with... Well, you can either fall apart, or take the void as an opportunity to build something new. And it starts with what you call yourself.
A Fight Or Die World
I think this is one of the defining quotes of WOLFEN. It's always in times of great adversity that our best and our worst qualities come out, and reconciling ourselves with the fact that our longest allies might have turned enemy could determine whether or not we live to see the next sunrise. The concept is as universal as the response to it is individual and personal.
Humanity At Its Best(?)
It's easy to look at the disastrous aftermath of a bad decision like this and say, "Necessity drove people to it; converts were simply too powerful a force to fight any other way." But let's not forget that Wolfen and converts didn't just spontaneously appear in this world. In the shadow of every ambitious dream is a terrifying nightmare waiting to be unleashed.
Vicious and Venomous
Convert venom paralyzes prey within seconds, while rendering it sexually receptive and/or fertile. In females, it force ovulation; in males, an erection and accelerated sperm production. The prey remains in this helpless state of painful readiness until conception or ejaculation is achieved. Females are usually released afterwards. Males are eaten. Side note: Gestation period for Grays is 3 months, and they are born with a full set off teeth they sometimes use to eat their way out of the womb. Terrified yet?
"What I had to do."
It's difficult not to judge someone for their actions when they'd caused you immeasurable pain. But the rules say you only get to hold the moral high ground until the tables turn. Because they will, eventually, and the actions of someone who has a gun to their head are very much not equivalent to the actions of someone who still has unfettered free will.
The Last Straw
The amount of abuse people can tolerate before they snap is different for everyone. Some won't stand for even the smallest infraction. Others, conditioned to believe this is their true lot in life, take longer to reach their limit. But the timing of the snap isn't nearly as important as the form it takes. What would you do: fold, flee, or fight? What if your life and the lives of your loved ones depended on how you answered that question?
When Giants Fall
I could write essays on this particular character and this particular scene. This is probably the first time in Aiden's life when he's felt truly vulnerable. How difficult must it be for a man who's gone his entire life knowing he could take whatever anyone dished out and pay it back with a smile on his face and a song in his heart to accept that he is NOT invincible after all?
Hard Times Make for Awful Choices
It has been said that you can't really understand a villain until you understand why he is the hero of his own story. Klaus Koch may be the worst kind of monster out there, but in a world full of them, the one who's willing to go the farthest always wins. The most powerful tyrant will gain and keep his position at the top by instilling terror in everyone under him until they fervently believe he is the only one strong enough to protect them from their own shadow.
Fear Keeps You Alive
Nature does nothing redundantly. Everything we do, everything we feel, has a purpose in the grand scheme of things, including fear. We have created this artificial construct of Bravery to tell ourselves that fear is for weaklings; we've subjugated our instincts with walls and fences, technology and guns, so we can call ourselves evolved, immune to the drives of our animal impulses. But I wanted to strip all that away. Just to see what's left when Instinct is all people have to go on. Whether there is anything left at all...
Where is the line?
The most dangerous scientific studies are those where questions of morality never even enter into the equation. I wrote this scene into the book to raise a simple question, that isn't really simple at all: At what point did the scientific curiosity of Project Delta-Omega turn into sadistic self-service? Was it before or after the dens imploded? Were the original teams really so ignorant of their creations' destructive potential that they never saw it coming?
The Romantic Element
WOLFEN was never meant to be a romance. But from its conception it had a strong romantic element to balance out the cruelty and horror. This world is so overwhelmingly harsh from the onset that the relationship between Bryce and Sinna became something almost transcendent in contrast.Their bond isn't "romantic" in the sense of puppy eyes and love poems, it's more instinctual. They naturally fall into into it without any need for machinations, deals, orchestrated seductions, or ulterior motives. They simply... fit. As if they'd meant to.
Happily Ever Afters
The first sentence here is probably my most favorite quote from this book. But there is so much more to "The Wolf's Lament" than just a fairy tale. This is a Wolfen child defending the fairy tale monster, switching the traditional roles of villain and (tragic) hero, because she's never known humans as anything other than tormentors, oppressors, and boogeymen. In her world, she is the wolf, and humans are the villains. This is the first step to history being re-written by the evolutionary winners.
No Two Enemies Are Alike
Morality doesn't always go hand-in-hand with scientific progress. The people who manufactured the new subspecies might have underestimated their strength and intelligence, but their biggest oversight was never taking into account that these creatures had souls, too. Converts were too savage to be anything other than a threat. But maybe the outcome would have been different with the Wolfen if only they hadn't groomed them into an enemy. If only...
Evolution At Its Worst
Imagine the ultimate killing machine, one ten times stronger and faster than its prey (you), with no other thought except to feed. Imagine a horde of dozens of them. Scared yet? Now imagine there's a creature just as savage, but somehow capable of exerting control over them.
Cynicism Saves Lives
Times of crisis always bring out the best or the worst in people. One of the major themes in Wolfen is that humans can't be trusted, but Sinna has a very hard time accepting this, even when experience teaches her otherwise. Her first instinct is to see the good, the potential, and she never grows out of it, which is part of why I love her as a character. She's the light in a world turned pitch black.
Character Development: Dare
Have you ever met a person and instantly wanted to high five them in the face with a chair? That's what writing Dare was like. Of all the characters in Wolfen, I hated Dare the most. The monsters were slaves to their nature, Klaus, even at his worst, had a sort of malevolent nobility about him which demanded respect. Dare has none of that. He's gutter scum, plain and simple.
Happily Ever After Not Guaranteed
Wolfen is not a story about good overcoming evil. The "bad" creatures humans created aren't inherently evil, they're just agents of chaos. You can defeat evil with good (or so the poems say), but how can you stop mindless chaos? The hard truth is, once it spreads past a certain point, you can't.
Villain and Antihero
Klaus is about as evil as a character can get; never a doubt about which side he's on. The girl, Desiree, is more of a wild card. This is her coming of age story as much as Sinna's, except her starting point is on the other side of the scale. It would have been so easy to write another loyal henchman to Klaus, but Desiree had always been worlds more complicated than that in my mind. The stories this girl could tell...
Wolfen Psychology 101
Initial observations of Wolfen were all based on the external: physical traits and responses. But when the project (and the world) collapsed, people quickly learned to exploit the internal side of Wolfen. Males, being the stronger, more unpredictable of the species, were especially troublesome. So humans learned that the fastest way to force a male's obedience was to threaten a female or child of his pack. What a charming species we are...
Survival Of The Cruelest
Up until now, Sinna had only seen a very small part of the world, and all of it dead. This is her first glimpse of human survivors, and what they'd had to do to stay alive. Let's just say Aiden hadn't been exaggerating...
Silence Speaks Volumes
A lot of the things that had been done to Wolfen were only glossed over in the book. I could probably write volumes on it, but it wouldn't be a story I'd want to read, so I left them out, but that doesn't mean I didn't see it happen in my mind. You know all those tests and experiments scientists do on lab animals for medicine and cosmetics? Wolfen had it much, much worse. And that was before order collapsed.
Humor: The Spice of Life
This is one of my favorite scenes in the book. It makes me chuckle every time I imagine the blank look Aiden gives the flimsy little tripod stool. But his levity, is quickly dimmed when he has to relate some harsh truths from Bryce's past. Light and darkness. One can't exist without the other.
Tough Love
Sinna's first confrontation with a convert since San Francisco. Had Wolfen been a romance, Bryce would probably have acted much differently, but here, he doesn't have the luxury of coddling Sinna. And he's not the type of man who would, even if he could. Sinna's life literally depends on how quickly she can unlearn every instinct humans had taught her. And the lesson couldn't have been delivered more succinctly than this.
Stop Thinking Like A Human
I will forever love that line. Not just because of the sentiment behind it, but because it was delivered so off-hand, adding insult to injury. "Don't trust us? Get over it." Smooth, Aiden. Really smooth.
Character Development: Aiden
The Wolfen brothers have always been yin and yang in my mind. Where Bryce is the dark, broody one, Aiden is everything bright and shiny. He talks incessantly and has a killer sense of humor, but when he snaps, he snaps in a big way. I never had a problem writing Aiden's scenes. Unlike Bryce, who had to have his story dragged out of him, Aiden just never shut the hell up.
Character Development: Bryce
Bryce (Beta Twelve) is one of my favorite characters in this book. He is the greatest window into how the Wolfen were treated by their keepers. Scarred, silent, incredibly intense, he is the thing monsters fear most. Or would, if they were capable of fear. Or basic cognition...
World Building: San Francisco
In any major disaster, especially biological, big, crowded cities are always hit first and hardest. People flee as fast as they can, but what's left behind after they're gone? In this case, a ghost city where not even insects survive. An eerie sight of a once-vibrant metropolis.
Character Development: Connor
If I was putting together an apocalypse survival team, Connor would be on my list of people to avoid at all cost. He's one of those people for whom laws of human decency ceased to exist when those who enforced them died off. Now there's nothing to stop him doing whatever he wants.
h. sapiens infensus
"Subjects appear to have malformations in the inner ear, resulting in poor hearing. Communication is impaired, leading to outbursts of violent behavior. No social structure observed. Some success achieved through ASL, though further study required on development. Adjust dietary regiment. Conversion affects digestive tract–subjects strictly carnivorous. Security flag raised to red. Caution ad--" Source: http://wolfenwideweb.com
