I keep on trying to get back into the practice of updating my blog on a regular basis, but every time I turn around something major is happening.

Just before I started my vacation, I found out that Teksyndicate is doing a European Tour. I was getting ready to grill when a friend of mine, Angela, posted on Facebook that Vincent Zain (aka: Ian) was going to be in Germany with his good friend Ward Hale (aka: Logan) and she’d wondered if he’d made plans on visiting me while they were driving through the country on tour. Unfortunately with all of the crazy plans and meeting up with fans from Ward’s website https://teksyndicate.com/, he completely forgot about letting me know when they were going to be in country, so we didn’t get a chance to meet up in Frankfurt when they were on their way to Munich. There was no way I was driving down to Munich Sunday afternoon on a school night … I mean work night. That would have been an eight to ten hour round trip drive for me “IF” there was no traffic and that doesn’t even take into the account hanging out. I would definitely need more time for hanging out with those two since they are still hardcore gamers and metal heads looking to have fun and see the nightlife in Germany. Still, it was a big disappointment.

One of the things that I hate about living in Germany is that I don’t usually get any time to meet up with my old gaming friends. Usually when I head back to Florida I make sure to take some time to visit people one-on-one here and there, but unfortunately there’s no massive LAN party to hang out and BBQ at like old times. Don’t get me wrong, now-a-days I suck ass at playing, but for me it’s no longer about winning. I mean, of course I always want to win and try to win, but it’s not about gaming or winning, but just seeing those good friends I miss. Now for my friends, it might be more about beating my ass, since I was so hardcore to beat in-game when I was into playing.   

Vacation started Thursday when I left work. Even though I had a lot to do, such as picking up my daughter and my wife’s nephew from the airport (a four hour trip), I surprisingly had a chance to get a lot of writing in. The plan was to take a week to relax and pack for our trip and then head to the south of France, but then Monday morning at 2 AM (02:00 for you Europeans) a river of muck decided to take a trip through the bottom portion of our house. Now Tuesday morning (around 00:30) I’ve finally had a chance to get dry and sit down before collapsing.

Coming from Florida, I have a long history with flooding and being declared a disaster zone. My home city of Rosdorf here in Germany would be close to hitting that “disaster zone” level. What I find really odd in comparison between Florida and Germany with flooding is that usually in Florida you get a warning when shit’s about to get bad. In Germany you find out when the shit just hits out of the middle of nowhere. While a lot of rain, a large hill and a farmer’s field might not sound as exciting as a hurricane, surprisingly enough I have learned to have some respect for this combo. It’s amazing how much water can start traveling downhill at once to create a flash flood. My wife sent me up to our backyard (we have a two level house since we live on a hill) and the amount of water I saw waiting to pour into our house made me realize there wasn’t jack I could do to stop it, so instead I came up with a great plan. Open up the back window it was pouring into and the front door. Sounds strange, but there really wasn’t any other choice. The water and mud poured through the house and then things got better. Better is relative. Better meant lots of water damage and a carpet of mud two inches deep, but better than the river that was passing through a moment earlier. Once things calmed down we were able to clean things up. The whole lower level of our house is thrashed and our landlords are going to have some major repairs to do, but it’s clean. Oh, we also found out that the flood insurance we have doesn’t count for natural flooding, only man made flooding. My wife had specifically requested to have full coverage, but the jack who wrote up the policy didn’t add in natural flooding and we missed that point.

Luckily it’s just stuff. The important things, such as our lives and health are good. The other stuff, although upsetting, is just stuff. I’ve lost everything I’ve owned before, this isn’t the first time … more like the fourth … but there is only so much you can do. We are still going to go on vacation. We’d lose too much not going and well staying won’t make things better.    

Story wise tying up this last fight scene is time consuming. I’m not even bothering to worry about word counts or anything like that. I just want the scene written correctly. When of my plans with the Last Paladin Series is to have the story progress somewhat like an MMO’s major dungeon crawl. Each book needs to have a major boss to defeat or deal with that opens up the next book to the series. The “boss experiences” have to be unique and over the top, so I’m trying to come up with a scene that was as cool as the ending climatic fight scene in Flight. At first I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to do this adequately, but now that I’m almost completely through the scene I have to say I think I hit it. It’s really sounding good.

Okay, I think that is enough for an update. I need to go collapse in bed. 
I'm adding a link for those of you who are interested in seeing the flooding. The video is in German, but the pictures of the flooding is all the explanation you need. http://www.wetteronline.de/wetter-videos

I’ve noticed that most of the urban writers that I tend to read usually bring their home stomping grounds into their stories. I believe this is an excellent way to bring a touch of reality and grounding to your novels as you twist the world around you to fit your vision. I figured if Patricia Briggs can make the Tri-Cities areas of Washington exciting and interesting, then I should have no problem bringing my old stomping grounds in Florida to life for my first book, Flight. I mean come on its Florida. There are so many different things to choose from. I was able to reference the Coral Castle and Trapper Nelson’s, both of which are super cool locations. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve canoed down the Loxahatchee River on my way to Trapper Nelson’s to hang out for a day in the wilds of Florida. The whole area is just cool and great for the imagination. Not to mention, it was just cool to create an action packed story like Flight in my hometown.    

For Destiny’s story, I wanted to do something similar, hence the whole European / NATO feel of my story. Being stationed in overseas and frequenting places like Ramstein Airbase just made me want to be able to create a story around these cool places in my daily life, so in book two I’ve tried to do my best to bring in the cultural stuff from living and working in Europe into the story. Agents Beth Kurwoski and Ryan Moss end up flying into Ramstein Airbase in a C-17 Globemaster III before flying out of Naples, Italy in a V-22 Marine Osprey. Klaus Krüger, a German Ukkodian who is essential in helping Beth and Ryan in get several groups of Ukkodians together, is a fun character taken directly from a nice German I used to work with at the Army Corps of Engineers. His first name is Klaus. Klaus in many ways is built from this interesting man, which helps to breathe life into this character. Klaus (when you say that you have to use a hard “K” sounds that drags out like Kkkloous) happens to get three young Polish men to join him for the adventure. Again, due to my wife’s heritage and our yearly visits to her family in Poland, I felt like I was able to see these characters easily. The three men are named Janusz Lipowski, Ivan Bartkowski and Kai Yurek, which all are based on people I’ve met. Both the Germans and Poles have an interesting history when it comes to swords. An example is Klaus’s five foot long Zweihänder sword.

For the Italians I went for more of a Matrix theme. One of the interesting things I discovered in some of my research is that many Italian martial arts work with different ages from Italy’s past. The two Italians are named Marco Bruno and Fabio Lombard. Marco is more of a Roman Style fighter, while Fabio is a swordsman/fencer. Whenever I think of Italians I think of fine leather and stylish clothing. To get the right feel I watched scenes from the Matrix series to get the feel of what I was looking for. I think they turned out pretty awesome.

Lastly, I decided to go with Greeks for my last group of Ukkodians. I wanted to do something like a Spartan style fighting warrior, but after researching their culture I didn’t feel like that would be the right thing to do. Although Greeks love their Spartan past, modern day Greeks love the freedom fighters that freed their country from the Byzantine Empire. This is huge to the Greeks. Even in today’s day and age you’ll see Greek men dressed on Sunday in this honored uniform and their Honor Guards dressed in the typical battle dress from that time period. Even cooler is the fact that these Maniots freedom fighters were basically Dorians, the decedents of the Spartans, and have been the backbone of country, fighting off invader after invader while the rest of the country fell around them. Truly an awesome history and something that will be a lot of fun for my story, the only problem is that I hate the traditional outfits the Greek fighters wear. Here is a link for those who don’t know about the Evzones uniforms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evzones  

Sigh … I’m sure white tights, silk skirts, garter belts and pomp-pomp shoes were cool in the early 1800’s, but I have to say I’m not a fan of the outfits. None the less, the Greeks are such a cool people that I just have to go with them as they are. Helpful since the story is actually occurring on a Greek island. I do try to have fun with the story with this in a respectful way. Picture how modern day Marines and Special Ops units from anywhere else in the world would react to such a uniform. While many would ridicule the Greek uniforms, surprisingly enough many Special Ops operators worth their salt know just how deadly these Greek fighters really are. Anyway, in the story two of the main Ukkodian Greeks are Colonel Thanos Karaiskakis and Sergeant Stelios Anagnostakos who have a squad of six additional Greek warriors.  

This doesn’t mean the story is going to be only about foreign fighters. The primary force that I’m pulling into the story is the U.S. Sixth Fleet and Task Force 60, which has a U.S. Marine Expeditionary Unit assigned for ground and air assaults. Still the Ukkodians play major roles in the story and will be a huge part of book three and four.

On a more personal note, one of the things I constantly am dealing with is the differences between my home state of Florida and living in Germany. Surprisingly enough, the thing that stands out to me the most is the differences in the weather. I won’t even mention the whole “not having any descent beaches” nearby to go to. Going surfing on the weekends with my two Labradors or just simply taking a walk after work during the week and looking for sea-glass was two of my favorite pastimes that I simply have learned to live without. The weather on the other hand, is another matter altogether.

Right now the temperature is ranging from the low forties to the hundreds, mostly ending up towards the high nineties to one hundred ranges. Although this sounds severe, especially when most offices and houses do not have air conditioning, this typically only lasts for a month to a month and a half, before it once again turns cold and rainy. Although cold and rainy is perfect for writing, it’s lacking in the whole “sunshine” department, which is why I feel guilty complaining about the hot weather. Still it’s freaking hot! I guess I’ll have to pop open a cold strawberry beer to deal with the heat. Luckily the beer here is some of the best in the world, at least to my limited palette.