Sometimes you just can’t keep a good character down. Mike Martiniere sandbagged me when I wrote the first Martiniere Legacy books, appearing as the five-year-old clone of Philip Martiniere in Realization. He kept nagging at me until I wrote his own book, The Heritage of Michael Martiniere.
One thing that intrigued me was the thought of what it would be like to grow up as a clone. Mike is brought up on an isolated Eastern Oregon ranch, but he also spends time in places like Paris and Los Angeles as part of a wealthy, privileged, powerful family. He was originally created by his progenitor as a blood donor, though it later comes out that maybe, just maybe, his progenitor had notions of trying to possess Mike in order to achieve immortality. At the very least, Philip Martiniere in that universe viewed Mike as a source for spare parts.
All of this was based on choices as the author. I had Mike think of Philip Martiniere as his progenitor, because that seemed to be the best descriptive option, especially since Mike hates Philip’s guts for what was done to him before he was rescued from Philip’s clutches. In the climatic conclusion of Realization, Mike spits out defiance against Philip by threatening to bite him—the only weapon he had available as a five-year-old.
Mike is also subject to all the ailments of the man he was cloned from. That means osteoporosis at a young age, cardiac and lung problems, arthritis, and a lot of other issues. Not all cloning is like this—equine clones, for one, don’t seem to have the same issues that Dolly the sheep had. I went with the Dolly methodology because that made a better story.
His medical struggles make up a big part of Heritage. But it also deals with the malign influence of his progenitor, especially since Philip, although dead, manages to reappear as a digital thought clone. Philip is a rather nasty Big Bad with megalomaniac ambitions, and he had the money and power to try to implement them.
Which…brings us to multiverses and The Cost of Power.
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I didn’t originally set out to write a multiverse. However, in the last book of the main Martiniere Legacy series, Gabriel Martiniere, Philip’s son, starts speculating about what if. What might have been if…and the concept intrigued me. I wrote a couple of rather romantic books where one of the foundational premises of the Legacy changed.
Then I started getting other ideas, including the digital thought clones that popped up in Heritage and another book in the character-focused side series, People of the Martiniere Legacy. Things kept brewing, and I had the notion that digital thought clones could cross universes.
I had wanted to play further with the implications of mind control. That was the original concept of The Cost of Power. Then I decided it would also be interesting to look at a different version of Philip Martiniere. But what made things different? Well, that’s when the digital thought clones came in—digis. Then a bunch of other stuff that I’ll discuss another time.
Originally, a digital version of Gabe was going to be the dominant good guy digi. That got confusing, especially since Philip had an evil digi counterpart. Who else to bring in but Mike? The more I thought about Mike as the lead digi, especially in the later books, the more I liked it. Plus that allowed me to stage a confrontation between Mike and Philip. I thought there was more to Mike’s story than what shows up in Heritage, but there really wasn’t enough beyond that to write another book, until now.
So. Mike is the leader of the good digis as we move through The Cost of Power.
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Now this is the point where I slide into shameless self-promo. The Cost of Power trilogy releases in August and September. The first book, Return, comes out on August 20th and it’s now up for preorder. As a preliminary, I’m running a sale on The Heritage of Michael Martiniere. $2.99 for the ebook at all ebook vendors, starting on July 15th. So if you want to find out more about Mike’s background, check it out at the links below.
Stay tuned to find out more.
Heritage Book Links:
The Cost of Power: Return Book Links:
