I’m thrilled to be participating in the blog tour for Zenn Scarlett, one of Strange Chemistry’s new speculative fiction releases.

About Zenn Scarlett

When you’re studying to be exoveterinarian specializing in exotic, alien life forms, school… is a different kind of animal.

Now, with the help of Liam and Hamish, an eight-foot sentient insectoid also training at the clinic, Zenn must learn what’s happened to her father, solve the mystery of who, if anyone, is sabotaging the cloister, and determine if she’s actually sensing the consciousness of her alien patients… or just losing her mind. All without failing her novice year….
 

Guest Post from Christian Schoon

Zenn Scarlett tells the story of a young exoveterinarian student working her way through the toughest interval of schooling she’ll ever face: an exovet’s novice year. So, we’re talking daily hands-on encounters involving the diagnosis and treatment of gigantic, often dangerous alien animals, brain-taxing course work and testing in everything from exotic biology and pathology to exo-planet ecology and alien cultures, plus a daily roster of chores around the Ciscan Cloister Exovet Clinic where she lives and trains. And, in Zenn’s case, you can add a few additional issues like the loss of her exovet mother during a risky procedure on a colossal animal known as an indra, an absent, grief-stricken father who seems to have suddenly dropped off the map, a local towner boy who’s showing a new and distracting interest in her and, strangest of all, the disturbing feeling that lately she’s been… sharing thoughts with some of her alien patients.

OK then, we have a few stress-bringers going on here. So, what kind of character is Zenn and how does she cope with all of the above, and a few more issues I haven’t had the heart to mention? First off, she knew that most of this work load was coming. Any exovet in their novice year can expect to be overworked, underappreciated and generally pushed to the limits of their endurance. This is entirely deliberate. It tends to quickly eliminate from the program the candidates who enrolled because “Gee, wouldn’t it be fun to be a vet who gets to hang out with crazy-interesting off-world creatures all day and have people think you’re cool?” Yes. These people generally run for the cloister’s main gate sometime in the first week.

Zenn knew what she was getting into because she was born and raised at the Ciscan Cloister, in the deep end of the Valles Marinaris on Mars. Her mother Mai was an exovet, and Zenn never admired anyone as much as her mother. So, pretty much since she was old enough to walk, she’s tagged along with her Uncle Otha, the clinic’s director-abbot, as he made his daily rounds taking care of the cloister’s menagerie of patients. And this has given her an advantage, of course. Even though she’s only in her first year, Zenn feels quite sure she knows as much as a third-year student. This sort of confidence, however, can occasionally trip a girl up.

But even when Zenn does trip, or maybe especially when she fails, she responds in the way she’s been brought up to respond: logically, examining the situation from all sides, weighing the evidence, formulating a course of action and following through. She was raised in a house of science, and Reason, with a capital R, has shown itself to be her friend, time and again. Which is a good thing. Because actual friends are scarce on the ground in Zenn’s life. Since the Earth cut off all contact with Mars, as well as the dozen other planets of the Local Systems Accord, the enrollment at the cloister has dwindled until now, Zenn is the sole remaining student. And the towners in nearby Arsia City are much too suspicious and xenophobic to allow their children to associate with someone like Zenn, someone who interacts with “unclean, disease-carrying” alien animals.

That is, all towners except Liam Tucker. His sudden “friendliness” with Zenn has her unsettled and annoyed. She can’t afford to be distracted. Not with her critical end of term tests coming up. So, she approaches the Liam Question in her usual fashion: assembles the pros and cons of allowing him into her life, analyzing the data, and deciding: no, too risky, too distracting. Unfortunately, as she quickly discovers, some problems simply don’t submit to the rigors of logic. Liam is a problem like that.

And the above, in a nutshell, describes Zenn’s conflicts as a character. She’s trained to believe the universe is amenable to reasonable interpretation. But as we all know – if we’re human beings – the most reasonable response to certain life events… is, must be, to act in an unreasonable way. For someone like Zenn, this may be the most confounding lesson she’ll confront during her novice year at the fabled Ciscan Exovet Clinic.
 

About CHRISTIAN SCHOON:

Find Christian on:

• Twitter
• Official Website

Christian Schoon grew up in Minnesota, and worked his way through college in a succession of rock bands before earning his degree from the U of Nebraska-Lincoln School of Journalism.

Following a stint as an in-house copywriter/scriptwriter at Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, he supplied freelance copy for the entertainment industry and scriptwriting for live-action and animated TV.

Currently, he writes from his 150-year-old farmstead in Iowa which he shares with a fluctuating number of horses (generally less than a dozen, but not always), 30 or so cats, a dog, three ferrets and a surprisingly tolerant wife.

The Zenn Scarlett books are his first novels, however he admits to being an unrepentant fan of science fiction and fantasy ever since discovering the tales of Edgar Rice Burroughs in the fifth grade.