The last couple weeks have been crazy with my personal life being as crazy busy as my work life, which is why I’ve been MIA for the last couple weeks. Temperatures here have been fluctuating between 90 to 100 degrees Fahrenheit (36 to 41 Celsius). For those Information Technology professionals like me working inside without air-conditioning in a room full of computers and people the temperature is around 98 to 105 degrees on almost a daily basis. Even with the new job where I’m allowed to wear shorts in the worst of the summer months, it’s still unbelievably hot in the office. At the same time, I feel bad complaining about the hot weather, since we get very few hot, non-rain filled days in Germany. Basically a month and a half and it’s back to the cold rainy weather where I never leave home without a jacket. Still, it’s hard to get used to sweating myself to sleep in oven temperatures that make you light headed. Temperatures that give me flash backs of my early childhood growing up in Florida when my family was too poor to have air-conditioning, not that air-conditioning or even screens are common in Europe unless you live down south in Italy and Spain.
The good news is that most weekdays I’ve managed to get some writing time in. The bad news is that as I started finishing off the final fight scene that I had to add in a whole new set of characters. These characters will play pivotal roles in books three and four too, which brought me up short for almost a week as I began fleshing out these new characters. Since the action is book two in Europe based, many of these characters’ nationalities are German, Polish, Italian and Greek and part of the European Arm of the Ukodian Religion. Another cool aspect about the European side of this book is that I can bring aspects of my IRL into the story. Like having Riviera Beach Police Detective Beth Kurwoski and Agent Ryan Moss of the CTA team up together into a new government agency that has been formed to deal with this new alien trans-dimensional threat and then having them fly into Ramstein Air Base Germany to meet up with some of Polish and German Ukodians, before flying to Naples Air Base Italy on a C-130 Hercules and then flying a Marine V-22 Osprey to the Greek island of Santorini to meet up with a Marine Raider battalion and part of the United States Sixth Fleet.
God, just researching what I want to use for the book has been a blast! It’s taken a good week of thought and research to flesh out these European Characters, their looks, their likes and dislikes, cultural differences and how to bring them into the storyline in a way that makes sense in a storytelling way and Military procedural way. I’m putting a little more forethought into who they are then I did for CTA Agent Ryan Moss, who is turning out to be a major character. Not that Agent Moss turned out to be bad. I’m actually quite fond of him and was probably just as surprised as many of my readers when he made it through the climatic ending of Book One still alive.
For the rest of the stuff I’m using a writer’s prerogative to a point. I’m doing my best to keep the story within the realm of possible military operating procedures, while at the same time keeping the story fun and action packed. I already know a bunch of stuff about the Polish people due to my wife being Polish, but the Greek stuff has been super cool. There is a whole history of modern day Spartans that live in the region of the Mani Peninsula. The descendants of the ancient “Dorian” population that was once Sparta and who have been the backbone of Greece’s resistance to foreign invaders, from the Byzantine Empire in 1821, Fascist Italy in 1944 and Nazi Germany in 1945.
For those of you in the United States who worry about having the book’s Earth side story focus too much on Europe, don’t worry. There is plenty of action going on with the United States military along with our NATO allies. Kind of like the TV Series 24: “Live Another Day” with the whole series being placed in London. For those of you who haven’t seen it I’ve attached the trailer below.
On a side note before I finish up today’s post, I unfortunately didn’t get a chance to wish those service members and government civilians working overseas a happy fourth of July. What every one of us does while serving our country overseas makes a difference in so many people’s lives. Not just for the countries that we give aid to around the world as we strive to make a positive difference in those peoples’ lives, but supporting the troops, civilians and their families that makes this all possible. I salute you!
The good news is that most weekdays I’ve managed to get some writing time in. The bad news is that as I started finishing off the final fight scene that I had to add in a whole new set of characters. These characters will play pivotal roles in books three and four too, which brought me up short for almost a week as I began fleshing out these new characters. Since the action is book two in Europe based, many of these characters’ nationalities are German, Polish, Italian and Greek and part of the European Arm of the Ukodian Religion. Another cool aspect about the European side of this book is that I can bring aspects of my IRL into the story. Like having Riviera Beach Police Detective Beth Kurwoski and Agent Ryan Moss of the CTA team up together into a new government agency that has been formed to deal with this new alien trans-dimensional threat and then having them fly into Ramstein Air Base Germany to meet up with some of Polish and German Ukodians, before flying to Naples Air Base Italy on a C-130 Hercules and then flying a Marine V-22 Osprey to the Greek island of Santorini to meet up with a Marine Raider battalion and part of the United States Sixth Fleet.
God, just researching what I want to use for the book has been a blast! It’s taken a good week of thought and research to flesh out these European Characters, their looks, their likes and dislikes, cultural differences and how to bring them into the storyline in a way that makes sense in a storytelling way and Military procedural way. I’m putting a little more forethought into who they are then I did for CTA Agent Ryan Moss, who is turning out to be a major character. Not that Agent Moss turned out to be bad. I’m actually quite fond of him and was probably just as surprised as many of my readers when he made it through the climatic ending of Book One still alive.
For the rest of the stuff I’m using a writer’s prerogative to a point. I’m doing my best to keep the story within the realm of possible military operating procedures, while at the same time keeping the story fun and action packed. I already know a bunch of stuff about the Polish people due to my wife being Polish, but the Greek stuff has been super cool. There is a whole history of modern day Spartans that live in the region of the Mani Peninsula. The descendants of the ancient “Dorian” population that was once Sparta and who have been the backbone of Greece’s resistance to foreign invaders, from the Byzantine Empire in 1821, Fascist Italy in 1944 and Nazi Germany in 1945.
For those of you in the United States who worry about having the book’s Earth side story focus too much on Europe, don’t worry. There is plenty of action going on with the United States military along with our NATO allies. Kind of like the TV Series 24: “Live Another Day” with the whole series being placed in London. For those of you who haven’t seen it I’ve attached the trailer below.
On a side note before I finish up today’s post, I unfortunately didn’t get a chance to wish those service members and government civilians working overseas a happy fourth of July. What every one of us does while serving our country overseas makes a difference in so many people’s lives. Not just for the countries that we give aid to around the world as we strive to make a positive difference in those peoples’ lives, but supporting the troops, civilians and their families that makes this all possible. I salute you!
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