"Conquest of Incel World" Goes Nero Wolfe!

 Here are some lead characters from Disney's “Frozen” in what I assume is some alternate world.


I'm getting back on the track of “Conquest of Incel World” the exciting sequel to “The Visitor From Incel World.” I'm enjoying this one a lot because I had some fun with the main characters.

I've long been a fan of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe novels, you see. Stout was an incredible writer. His prose style was smooth as silk. He got away with a lot of flaws in plotting because his books were a pleasure to read and his characters were some of the most engaging people in fiction.

Chief among those is Archie Goodwin, assistant and chief flunkie to the great detective Nero Wolfe. It's an open secret that Archie is the real appeal of the Nero Wolfe novels. He's the everyman through which we see Wolfe and the parade of familiar and fantastic characters that move through Wolfe's office in the course of a story. Goodwin is smart, sharp and would undoubtedly be a successful detective on his own if he wasn't in thrall to Wolfe's genius. He also has a cynical appreciation of Wolfe's flaws, because in addition to being a genius, Wolfe is lazy. Really fucking lazy, like “won't work until he's about to get thrown out of his comfy New York City brownstone” lazy. And Archie understands that perhaps his most important job is prodding Wolfe into working when he needs to. Goodwin understand that he's definitely a second banana intellectually to Wolfe (along with practically everyone else) but that he has qualities that Wolfe needs to be successful.

Well I think that with just a LITTLE bit of tweaking, Archie would make an EXCELLENT bratty slavegirl. His gender would have to change, but that attitude: perfect! Respect combined with cynical knowledge of the Master's flaws. Or in this case, Mistresses' flaws. Because of course Wolfe's gender has to change, too.

Except that I thought I'd make Wolfe asexual. In the Rex Stout novels, Wolfe is heterosexual but celibate by choice, fearing the effects that sexual passion has on him. (Wolfe's got a bit of a control dysfunction, too, I kept that for my version.)

At this point you may think my approach to characterization may be very similar to Jerry Lewis' approach to sculpture in The Bellboy. And I can't blame you. But I had fun with it, and I created a couple of interesting characters in Moxie Maven (aka Archie Goodwin) and Nitro Wilde (Nero Wolfe). Moxie is Nitro's slavegirl, but it's strictly a business collar, as Nitro is asexual. Moxie would fuck Nitro in a heartbeat, but she's not dying to have sex with Nitro, she's just a free use girl at heart, hence will do anyone she can hook up with. Just like Archie Goodwin, she's promiscuous, but she's got good taste.

Oh, there's also a plot about the invasion and conquest of Incel World, as it's known on Collar World (or Earth as we call it) mixed in there. And Moxie and Nitro will be squaring off with a team of agents from the CIA's Exceptional Cases Department, Felix Munger and Diana Stark. They do mostly paranormal casework, and they get called in on the Collar World (as Moxie and Nitro's timeline is called on our Earth) because although it's not strictly speaking paranormal, it is WEIRD, and Munger and Stark know their weird.

(And if you are thinking that Munger and Stark sound a lot like a certain Mulder and Scully … bingo!)

So, yes, I'm having great fun with my characters. Hopefully, readers will, too.