Welcome to Lynn's Page! 

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The room was well lit as I looked out over the smiling and surreal faces of my new “friends”.  It was my turn, so I bravely put away my pride and mustered all the confidence I could find to greet the “meeting” members.

“Hi, my name is Lynn and I'm a Voyage junkie.”

A chorus of, Hi Lynn's was followed by smiles encouraging me now that I had finally come to admit my...er... “problem”. 

I sat down, and a woman with blond hair took the podium and using her laptop for notes began to encourage us on how to beat the urge to watch Crane, Nelson, and Morton save the earth again from sea creatures, aliens, and megalomaniacs wanting to rule the world.  Then she moved on urging us to not feed our desires by sneaking in a short fan fiction story during lunch.  Next she urged us to stop looking for our next ONI assignment in the mailbox and to put away our Field Operative call signs, and even reminded us that Lee Crane, Harriman Nelson and Chip Morton were just characters in Irwin Allen's world and not real at all!  Then she urged us to stop continuing to feed our habits by not writing anymore fan fiction stories....

All of the sudden I bolted up, sitting straight up in bed with sweat beading over my forehead.

“Another bad dream?”  My husband said, rubbing my arm comfortingly.

I nodded, trying to get the imagery of the dream out of my head.

“The same nightmare?”  He said, sitting up to rub my shoulders as I nearly broke down in tears.

“Yes, the same one,” I answered leaning over into his arms to be comforted.

“Well, you can rest easy.  No one's going to take away your Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea DVDs, fan fiction, or your word processor,” he said as I snuggled up and rested securely in his arms.

“Okay,” I answered, feeling relieved that it was only a dream; a terrible dream, a downright nightmare! 

What would I do without my daily fix of Seaview and her crew?

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Just kidding!  Okay, so I'm a bit dramatic.  But I do really enjoy Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and writing new adventures to share.  I'm a fairly new fan of Voyage viewing my first episode in 2011.  I enjoyed the show tremendously and by Magnus Beam I was hooked!  I began writing new “episodes” in my head, complete stories with dialog, scenes and plots.  This is something I have done ever since I was a little girl as I guessed plots on TV programs, rewrote in my mind plots that were weak or sloppy, and “fixed” stories that didn't have happy endings.  I shared my stories with my husband and he encouraged me to write them down, but I didn't have the confidence.  About a year later, I discovered Voyage fan fiction and read everything I could find.  After a while, I began to wonder if I could write stories in a way where the reader could see what I saw in my mind.  My husband encouraged me again and so in the summer of 2013 I began writing, and contacted Carol at Seaview Stories for publishing my stories online.  Once I started writing the stories kept coming, and I've discovered a wonderful outlet for my creativity.  My husband remains my greatest encourager, my trusted Beta, and even puts up with my infatuation for Captain Crane!

When readers ask how I've come to write so many stories I tell them the truth:  It has something to do with my over active imagination and the fact that I type over 70 words per minute!

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy the ongoing adventures of Seaview and her crew...at least according to my universe.

Lynn

Anatomy of a Story

Just for fun I thought I would walk my readers through my thought processes while developing a story.  If you haven't read Unspoken Regard you might want to read it first, unless you don't mind me spoiling key scenes for you!

Most of my stories start with a single scene in my mind; from there I begin to formulate a plausible storyline for that scene, like putting together a puzzle.  In this case, the story was born out of the scene where Lee brings Harry into the safe house and places him on the bed.  He turns to the contacts and tells them that they're not needed anymore and informs them that if anyone enters the room he'll shoot.  Lee must keep Harry from speaking freely and spends his night guarding him protectively, even though he is wounded himself.  My real purpose in writing the story is found in these scenes of Lee watching over Harry; worried not just for the secrets he is trying to protect, but for his friend.  This is how Lee's “Unspoken Regard” for Harry will be revealed.

I started the story building around the main scene.  It doesn't have to be the beginning of the story, but in this case it worked well to start with the action and add the back story in a flashback to three days earlier.  So I began with Harry being kidnapped.

The opening paragraphs reveal Harry's dry humor as he deals with the kidnapping.  “Has this been three or four times” he's been kidnapped since commissioning Seaview?  The dialog in his mind, while humorous, was also placed there purposely to assure the reader that I realize that kidnapping Harry is a common theme that reoccurs in my stories.  But, he's an important man and will continue to be in danger as long as he continues to produce important projects for the military.  So we're just going to go with it and hopefully the reader will find the process worth the trip.

Using a drug or truth serum is also a common theme and has been used plenty of times by fan fiction writers everywhere.  That's okay.  Writing fiction is like composing music.  There are only 88 keys on a keyboard and therefore only so many different sounds.  At some point in writing a new song a small section may sound familiar, the trick is to take that small section and create something brand new with it.  So, I decided that the drug given to Harry would be a “happy” drug, breaking down all his good sense and good judgment.  This lent itself to a different feel in the story from the beginning and was easy to build upon as the story progressed as Harriman Nelson, possessing so much knowledge just can't wait to share what he knows, and even perceives the man in black as a gentleman and a good guy!  By the way, no literary honors for how I dressed the characters by having the bad guy in black and Lee in a white shirt.  It wasn't written for any imagery of good versus evil, it's just that I happen to think that Lee looks good in that combination (remember “The Mummy” episode?).

Having Lee come to save the Admiral posed some planning problems as I had to come up with a plausible reason for Lee to be so readily available to save Harry before the 30 minute incubation period was complete.  This meant that it couldn't just be an ONI Mission gone bad and now ONI sends Lee in for the extraction.  Thus the second part of the story was born, the flashback of arriving in Amsterdam three days earlier.

An Oceanographer Convention sounded like a plausible reason for Harry to be all the way around the globe and bringing Lee along was necessary for the escape later, so I needed to decide why Lee was there.  Okay, it's possible that Harry just invited him, but it added to my real reason for writing the story to have Lee do a presentation.   It's a chance for Harry to let down some of his guard being way off in Amsterdam and to let his proud Papa feelings be exposed, ever so slightly.  This is how we see Harry's “Unspoken Regard” for Lee.

Next, I had to come up with a viable reason for Lee to give a presentation when he's a sub driver, not a scientist.  His observations of an underwater volcano seemed thrilling enough to catch any decent oceanographer's attention, so I wrote it in.  Then I decided that Chip had spent too much time on the sub as of late and needed a break, so I put him in the flying sub with Lee.  Then my imagination grew and I decided it needed to be a dramatic situation so I invented a “near disaster”.  Wow, sounds like a good story, I think I'll write that one later!  Anyway, while stuck in the flying sub, way too close to the underwater volcano Lee and Chip take pictures and can't help but make observations.  Lee's a pretty smart guy and Harry thinks he should share his observations and pencils Lee into one of his speaking slots, and voila!  Lee is now giving a presentation.

The story takes on a life of its own as I just take the characters through the likely turn of events to get them back to the warehouse and eventually back to the safe house where Lee is watching over Harry at present time again.  Now the fun begins, as I come up with discussion topics to keep Harry talking.  Notice that Lee is completely respectful even though Harry is compromised by the drug and is not speaking like himself.  Lee also uses topics that he knows interests Harry, and being good friends it's not hard to know what will keep Harry talking.  He doesn't take advantage of Harry's current situation, he just uses Harry's knowledge to keep him off the topic of Flaming Star and the humor we see is in the uncharacteristic babbling that Harry engages in.  Now one of the great things about secret government projects is that I don't have to tell you what Flaming Star is.  It's top secret!  Not even Lee gets to know as Admiral Johnson just tells him that it has to be kept out of the hands of the bad guys.  So “top secret” can be a writer's friend, but I did have to come up with topics for Lee to guide the conversation back to a safe place.  By the way, I do a lot of research and end up using wikipedia.com a lot as I don't have to wade through pages and pages to get to the information I'm looking for.  I needed to confirm that the “screws” on the sub were indeed propellers and that's where I found the great stuff on Bernoulli's Principle, Newton's Third Law of Motion, and an explanation of Cavitation.  After all, if Harry is speaking it should sound technical and impressive.

The drug finally wears off and Lee gets a little rest.  The next morning he rebuttons his shirt, ahemmm, okay the thought of Lee sitting in the chair with his shirt unbuttoned and exhausted was too much to pass up.  He heads out for coffee and asks, “Where's Claas?”  Here is a decision point.  Johnson believes the two local ops are sound, but he hasn't had enough dealings with them to know for sure, so are they there to help or are they really after Harry?  At this point I ask myself two questions: how long do I want the story to be and have I already accomplished what I wanted in my story?  If I decide to add more intrigue to the story then when Claas answers, “Right here,” Lee would turn around and find a gun pointed at him.  But that would require Lee and Harry fighting their way out of the safe house and I think I've already accomplished what I was really writing the story for, so I opt to make Ria and Claas good guys and Claas joins Lee at the breakfast table.

Now it's time for Harry to wake up, another decision to make.  Does he remember everything that went on?  I decide that for Harry to not remember puts my storyline too close to another fan fiction story and besides, it works better to have the scene of Harry's self-recrimination and Lee's comforting remarks, (which if you've read Out of the Darkness you know that Harry makes a great heartfelt speech to Lee urging him to forgive himself after his brainwashing, so there's a full-circle effect here.)  And by now, the reader has probably noticed that I wrote a similar story called Walking Home, but in that story it is Harry watching out for Lee, and it's in the fourth season.  This story actually predates it and I wanted to show what the “son” watching out for his “father figure” looked like so it's different sides of the same coin and therefore needed two stories to tell.

Now, it's time to work the boys to the airport for their extraction.  Another decision, which I really made earlier but now we get to see it played out.  Who will be Lee's contact whom he knows he can trust?  I could recall an ONI contact from an earlier story, or create a new one with a small back story, or....I can bring Chip in, because after all he spends too much time on the boat!  Now putting Chip in a flight attendant's uniform with his hair styled back the way he used to wear it in Season One was too much to pass up!

Lee downplays his injury, of course, and gets mileage out of Chip's TDY and then falls asleep as Harry wraps up his “Unspoken Regard” in a moment of candidness and honesty if only to himself.  Somehow, it doesn't matter that he never says those things to Lee, because Lee understands that their feelings are stronger than words and Unspoken Regard is sometimes way more powerful than a “get in touch with your feelings” moment.  The whole scene providing us with a satisfying ending that ties in the story title, just in case the reader missed exactly what I was trying to do in the first place.

That's the end, roll credits and notes.  Not all my stories move along in this fashion, but a good deal do, and I hope you found this little walk through my creative side a fun diversion!

Regards!

Lynn

Seaview Character Sketches

for Lynn's Stories

A little bit about the characters in my stories:

Seaview characters' personal lives follow the lead of the series in my stories, with a little fudging.  Lee remains unmarried throughout all four seasons, but Chip is married.  Chip begins wearing a wedding ring I think in season four, but I fudged and married him off in season two.  Hints of Lee’s desire for a family show up in small plot bunnies throughout my season three and four stories.  He finally finds the love of his heart in my Season Five series. 

Lee is an only child since siblings are never mentioned on the show.  Since his mother is mentioned, but not his father I have written that his father died when Lee was nine years old.  He was a fireman and died in the line of duty saving another fireman's life.  Lee's memories of his father are paramount to the shaping of the man Lee became.  One of my earlier stories explains that it is in watching his father that Lee learned about “doing the right thing, no matter the cost” and thus shapes his decisions for the rest of his life.

Lee doesn't get his US Navy Captain's rank until Season Five, and so I had to write a series of stories to explain why a man who has saved the world umpteen times over hasn't been promoted yet, and that's where we meet the vindictive Admiral Milton who suppresses Lee's next rank promotion in an effort to entice Lee back to active duty.

Lee is an ONI Operative as well, and I have made his appointment to Reserve status and serving upon Seaview contingent upon his continuing to accept missions.  Lee feels it's his duty to accept missions anyway if he is the most qualified for the assignment.  He has a strange relationship with Admiral Johnson, the head of ONI, with personal regard that is never expressed as Johnson keeps his feelings at arm's length because of the places he needs to send Lee.  Lee also cuts him a great deal of slack because of the tough command decisions Johnson has to make, even when Johnson is curt, formal and lacks any apparent regard for the condition of his operatives.  But occasionally the reader sees Johnson's regard for Lee, both professionally and personally.

Lee and Admiral Nelson have the same type of relationship that Irwin Allen allows us to see on the show, which is a quiet regard for one another that grows to a deep friendship and moves from “like brothers” to a father figure and son regard.  Lee never calls him by his first name unless they are on an ONI mission where it isn't practical or safe to use their ranks in the field.  Because he never uses his name outside an ONI mission, it is both dramatic and heartfelt the one-time Lee uses “Harry” in a candid moment of their friendship.  I expect that in their later years it becomes easier for Lee to use his name, but for now Harry is Admiral.

Admiral Harriman Nelson is as brilliant in my stories as on the series and is a prolific inventor and thinker.  He is so important aliens from a well know fiction world show up to take him out of the picture, and it takes two famous captains to save him.  Harry is complex, very emotionally charged, but very logical as well.  While keeping his feelings in check on the outside, the reader is able to see into Harry's mind and finds a man very proud of his Seaview family.  He considers Lee as a son, and has strong feelings for Chip as well, though not as pronounced he considers Chip “one of his boys” and a vital part of the NIMR Team and plans a new boat for Chip to Skipper in the future.

Chip is Lee's best friend having been roommates at Annapolis for four years.  They have kept up their friendship over the years, but it grows when Lee signs onto Seaview.  So Chip gets away with his fussing over Lee's physical condition after ONI missions, occasional rolls of the eyes etc... but he is also a professional and keeps it business in front of the crew.  Chip and Lee both regard each other as close as brothers.

Doc gets a name and I use William Jamieson, the doctor's name from the original movie, although on the series his name is never used.  Since names are shortened often on the show; Kowalski to Ski, Patterson to Pat, then Jamieson became Jamie, but only to the Command Team.  He is Doc Jamieson to most everyone else. 

Seaview wouldn't be complete without the supporting characters, which I try to write into stories as they bring their own flavor to the tales.  Notice that in the series Stu Riley is only seen on season two, that's because the actor who played Stu Riley got drafted into the army!  But in my stories, Stu Riley is still a main supporting character throughout seasons two through four (and my season five series).  Kowalski is Lee's main go-to man, meaning Lee trusts him and uses Ski, Patterson and Riley as his main backup.  I also use the dark headed hefty man that was named “Ron” in at least one episode, but shows up as a non-speaking regular throughout the series.  I've made his character a Latino named Ron Rodriguez and often accompanies the supporting cast as part of the go-to team.

Sharkey and Sparks are characters that usually play important supporting roles as well and show up often in my stories, as well as Chief Jones in Season One.

Jiggs Stark was a great character that only showed up one time in the series, but I've made him a semi-regular making appearances when appropriate.  He and Lee have called a truce although Jiggs still enjoys rattling his cage whenever possible.  However, Jiggs has a great deal of respect for Lee even though he's below flag rank, but would never tell Lee.