A Valentine's Story of Plutonic Love. February 13, 2023

 

 

With tomorrow being Valentine's Day, I feel obligated to write about a few chapters in The Penitent Warrior about the love of friendship, and about Jack Stamper's crush and enduring friendship with Kelly McCormick, Crown Princess of Atlanta, Georgia, and the story in my life that inspired it. It is about one of the worst things that happened to me in my twelve years in school, but it was still inspiring, and if it were not for this part of my life, I would not have material for my books. I will not spoil it, but if you knew me in eighth grade, you will probably know where it is going.

 Despite being a hero of the Amulet War, and singer/guitarist an alternative metal band, Jack is bullied relentlessly. Some of the people he goes to school with torment him because they like picking on weird people, others because it is part of their job, being either Scorpion agents or agents of the Red Russians' spy killing corps SMERSH a contraction of the Russian words  Smyrt Shpionam meaning, Death to Spies. That is where I draw inspiration from Ian Fleming's early James Bond novels, who were 007's enemies, and replaced by SPECTRE in all but one of the Sean Connery Bond movies. The closest they got to appearing were in one of Bond's underrated adventures, The Living Daylights that starred Timothy Dalton, and my personal favorite of the Connery era that I will watch later tonight, From Russia with Love, but that is beyond the point, and you will likely be able to distinguish fact from fiction. 

Gonig through his days in school, bonding with his friends except when they did nothing to stop the enemies antagonizing him, Jack felt deflated, and Princess Kelly was the only one of his friends who would stick up for him, and he would always confide in her about his problems, and when she was having a house party, she always invited The Spectres to be the band. A crush on her manifested and he was nervous about losing her to Lord Janus, the way he lost Karen Hopkins, and started coming to her about his problems and talking to her too much, because having Asperger syndrome made him not know when to stop. Jack's friends started teasing him about Kelly being his girlfriend, and he started claiming she was, not knowing how to contain that that was how much he liked her and could not think of an appropriate way to say she was his female best friend or his best friend that was a girl. Kelly's friends, the exceptions being her twin sister, Heather Bennett-McCormick and her adopted sister, Countess Meredith Brockwell, found his talking to her annoying, especially Jenny Cummings, a descendant of Orcs, who despised hard rock and alternative music. She started telling him to go away when he tried talking to Kelly, and Jack was disheartened, but their friendship did not sever. Cummings was indoctrinated by Queen Neelina Hama, and several SMERSH agents to join them, and she started insulting Jack every time he came near the princess, and said she only said she liked him because she did not want to hurt his feelings, and he would throw bile back at her. Jenny then told the principal of their middle school Jack was sexually harassing Kelly among other things, and because the school was located in a crime ridden sector of Atlanta, the principal believed her, likely because she also used nanobots to convince him so. Jack was then told he could not talk to Kelly for the rest of the school year, and people in his remedial classes ridiculed him for crying about it, and he then tried to obliterate Cummings, but was arrested. After being released, the school realized the claims Jenny made were not true, and he was allowed to talk to Kelly again, despite her friend's consternation, especially after The Spectres dirsupted the morning announcements with a propaganda concert. Later, Jack asked Kelly what he realized he should have asked when his crush on her manifested, which was if she would go out with him if she was not a princess and didn't have a boyfriend. Kelly really liked him, and was flattered, but could not think of him the same way, but told him whatever happened in the future, Jack will always be her best friend, which they will be the rest of their lives. As for Jenny, she will eventually see she joined the wrong crowd when she joined SMERSH, but she and Jack will always have a hard time saying they were friends. 

Now that I told you about that, you can likely guess what parts of the story were fact and which were fiction. Last night, at a Super Bowl party, my lifelong best friend, who used as inspiration for Brad Marsh, and is named him after, told me he sent copies of the book to several friends of his, and one of them is really enjoying it. He especially likes the 90s nostalgia that reminded him of music he had not heard in more than fifteen years, and I am pleased to hear that. So if you are looking for that kind of nostalgia, you know what to do.