#future novel

We hadn't plotted it in detail, but we were planning to explore Brian's backstory. He was a kid who never got attention even before his mutation manifested. We weren't sure if he came from a broken home, or was just neglected in his home, but either way, he always felt like he didn't know who he was even before he realized he was a mutant. As a kid from Puerto Rico, he was treated like an immigrant even though he was a citizen, and he felt somewhere in between.

Ultimately, the way we saw it, he had no real sense of a family, and in our initial proposal for the Hellions mini, we also stated that he had "no real sense of identity" beyond his friends and his role as a student at Xavier's.

One of the reasons we had Brian be with Cessily in the aftermath scenes of the final issue of the Hellions mini was to subtly set up that his situation and hers were similar.

We did know we were going to have Julian dig into this after the Hellions mini - that story was going to alert Julian to the fact that Brian had locked his sense of self into this group of friends, and Julian was gonna want to do something about it. This would have led to a story where Brian reconnected with his parents and we would discover that he hadn't been home since coming to Xavier's.

Our memory of those plans are pretty vague, but we think we wanted his mother to actually have missed him, and that Julian would push Brian to reconnect in ways that would help Brian forge a sense of self that would help him take the next steps in figuring himself and his powers out.

The trick with Brian is that some of our memory of these plans have blurred with the storyline for a supporting character for a novel we're writing. We wrote the novel years ago and are rewriting it now, and we realize we folded unused Brian plans into a character in that book and now don't remember how much of what we remember is unused Brian plans and how much is stuff we filled out when we morphed those plans into this new character.

"She went to the area where there were large rocks and she saw some people sat; they were meditating or reading and others were talking in total peace. She climbed some of the rocks and sat over one of them which had a smooth rounded shape, that made her feel comfortable.

She watched the waves and meditated on the beauty of the landscape looming before her eyes, and spent many hours of the morning scanning the horizon and mixing sensations with the abundance of her memories.

She carried a small book in her purse which began to read. As she was already thinking that should go back on track and going further along the coast, a kite fell over her feet. She looked around and saw a tall, thin young man approaching. He was wearing light brown trousers and a white shirt, over which he was wearing a buttoned and sleeveless vest, the same colour of the trousers.

A gold silk bowtie fell untidily under the handsome young man's neck. The sleeves were folded to the elbow, revealing manly arms. The youthful face, looked cheerful and fresh, the messy hair and the fine mustache were blond. He wasn't wearing his shoes, so Irene noticed that his feet were as white as the clouds in the sky.

She took the kite and stood up. She observed that a young woman was calling on to the man who was waiting under the rocks, but he was watching at her:

-You got it Gustav? answer me! Baron!

The young man turned to look at the fine lady who was calling him and then Irene, quickly and trying to hide her surprise, launched the kite, causing it to fly until it fell close to him.

Before he was going to pick it up, Gustav stared at her. Irene realized that he might recognize her, so she turned and fled quickly.

"Wait!" He yelled, but it was too late because she, dodging the gaps between each rock, jumped one after another and hurried away.

From my current manuscript.

A child is born on a rainy night. Its mother is in deep pain, clenching her fists on the side of the bed, knuckles burning white. She is crying out, desperate, but the doctors only stand and watch as this happens. They have given her nothing--no support, no pain medications. They know that there is nothing they can do to save her.