Impossible Odds: From Masada to Talisman

"Whether it's the Trojan War, the Battle of Thermopylae, or the Last Stand at the Alamo, many of the famous battles in history were sieges in which small forces took on much larger armies. Unfortunately, sieges don't make good stories because the smaller force won. They make the history books because the little guys fought well, before they died." ~Michael Westen, Burn Notice. Last stand, Ep 4.18

I like thousand to one odds.  Love 'em.  Can't get enough of them. Make it an intelligent war, I'm with you all the way.

300 Spartans (with about 10,000+ other Greeks) versus one hundred thousand (or a million, depending who you ask) Persian Imperial forces?* I'm there.

Nearly seven hundred Jewish rebels vs. a Roman legion at Masada?** I'm with you ...

The Alamo ... Okay, not so much, but I'm more familiar with the players involved, and I can't say that I liked any of them, on any side.

A hundred thousand Orcs of Mordor versus Gondor? That's at least worth an Academy Award....

In my own writing, I have a tendency to give the bad guys the upper hand as much as possible.  I try not to leave it as a matter of "evil badguy gains upper hand because he's using underhandd methods, while virtuous goodguy never sinks so low." Anyone who had read even one my self defense articles knows better.  When in doubt, bite a nose off, pull at an ear, gouge the eyes, and, of course, kick 'em in the groin, whenever possible.  My characters fight like their lives depend on it, usually because it does.

No, when I give the bad guys the upper hand, it's because they either have better training, better equipment, more people, or all of the above.

That's when I whip out The Anarchist's Cookbook, and go to work.  Because when my characters are out-manned  outgunned, outmaneuvered, and when things have stopped looking grim and have moved on to "we're all going to die" ....

That's when my characters get smart, get sneaky, and become very, very dangerous.


I've done it a few times in my books.  In A Pius Legacy (book three, should book one ever be published), I've practically got the army of darkness on our heroes' doorstep, and not one of my heroes even looks like Bruce Campbell.

I've got a murder mystery series on my hard drive that involves a writer, and a nerd, who's being hunted by assassins .... however, he got very good grades in chemistry, will hit people with everything and the kitchen sink, and he knows how to kill people with a pen.

The list goes on.

Besides, if it's a fair fight, you know how things go in fiction: the protagonist wins ...

However, when you have lopsided odds, and an author who has shown s/he's quite willing to assassinate any of his/her characters at will ... well then, that's when things get interesting, now, isn't it?






*Everyone by now should have at least heard of the story of Thermopylae ... aka The Hot Gates ... aka "The Gates of Fire" (which is my personal favorite translation) ... You may have seen the ads for the film 300.


**If you've never heard of Masada, in 70 AD, you had Israelites versus the Roman Empire. Only this wasn't Mossad or the IDF, but the sicarii, or knifemen. By 73 AD, the war was lost, and the last of the sicarii were held up in an old mountain fortress called Masada.

Originally, it was a story of how 700 rebels held out against the siege of a Roman legion, until the Romans finally breached the walls, only to find everyone had committed suicide, rather than be taken hostage again.

Recent research has concluded that the tale is a little different than originally reported -- the sicarii of Masada fought to the last man, woman, and child.

To this day, the Israeli Defense Force takes an oath: "Masada Shall Not Fall Again."

***Isn't it sad that this blog needs footnotes? :)

Why anyone can enjoy A Pius Man.

From Comic books readers and Scifi fans, to James Patterson and back. Why anyone can enjoy A Pius Man.

[Author's note: this was originally going to be a note on Marketing. It didn't turn out that way.]


What do you call a book chock full of hundred year old conspiracies, dangerous priests, psychotic mercenaries, operatives trained to kill practically from birth, international political intrigue, a terrorist plot, and a wide ranging collection of protagonists the likes of which the world hasn't seen since the team that took out Dracula?

You call it A Pius Man.

Fans of this page who remember that a contest is on will remember that there's something in it for you when you get people to join the Facebook page for A Pius Man: when the Facebook page hits 100 fans, I post and origin sotry for one of the characters. When it hits 150, I post a podcast of the prologue. When the Facebook page reaches critical mass, I post a chapter from the middle of the book, and the person who has brought in the most fans will have their name put into the novel.


Sound like fun?

Next question: who should read A Pius Man?  Or, who should you invite? 


On the face of it, it seems like yet another in a long line of bad Da Vinci Code ripoffs that have come out in legion since Dan Brown's super-hyped novel hit the scene an interminable amount of time ago. However, while my book has conspiracies and religion, that's more or less where the similarities end. There will be no puzzles, the French will not be a threat, and no one will spend dozens of pages finding their way out of an art museum.

That said, there are some people who just don't read thrillers. Understandable, it's a term so generic you can toss a net over a whole host of authors... some of whom probably should have a net thrown over them anyway, just to be safe. However, when a field is as vast as the comic-bookish feel of Clive Cussler's NUMA novels... to the theoretical science of James Rollins..... to a Barry Eisler novel, half of which takes place in the head of his protagonist, assassin John Rain..... It's almost as diverse a group as public Catholic figures—as Oscar Wilde used to say: Here Comes Everybody. Can't call it a historical thriller, because then it will be mistaken for a period peace like the Sharpe's novels of Bernard Cornwell—I wouldn't mind having his audience, but they might feel gypped to find it set in the 21st century.

So, who the hell should read this book?

Let's see....

Comic book fans: My first agent drew parallels between the team of protagonists and the Justice League.  One character has already been compared to Deadpool—of the comic, not the film. Throw in adversaries who seem preternaturally strong, fast, and trained... well, it's not like fighting the Hordes of Hydra, but my villain isn't exactly the Red Skull. Some are as serious as a police procedural, and some might as well have wanted to be Doc Savage when they grew up. One of them even works with “Middle Earth's Most Wanted Elven Assassin,” and no, I'm not kidding.

Science Fiction fans—who will hopefully forgive me for calling it “SciFi” above: Key pieces of this story involve NLW technology. Or, in standard English, non-lethal weaponry. Microwave cannons that emit plasma beams, tazer beam weapons, gases, explosives; if it's been mentioned, or appeared in a semi-realistic video game, it's probably in there. Throw in the laser-keyboards and the microwave microphones, you can outfit a small Sharper Image store.  And ALL of the technology is real.  I got it from Time magazine.

Spy fans: International intrigue? Got it. Shadowy figures? Check. Conspiracy theories? At least five of them, and three are right. We also have: the obligatory evil Cardinal; a pale, silver haired priest with commando training (not to be confused with an albino, of course); the Jesuits, the Opus Dei, and the Knights Templar all show up, just so I can play with some of the old cliches

Readers of history: Yes, A Pius Man actually has historical facts. Literally, they happened. This is a book where the history presented in its pages can be footnoted. I know this because the original draft had footnotes. It was suggested that I take them out... however, I still have a bibliography in the back.

People who like intelligent destruction: There's an assassination on page two, an explosion on page three, a wrecked car by page seven, and a mercenary with a resume that reads like scripts of the A-Team tv show. We'll ignore the shootout on the Spanish Steps in the armored SUV. Death, property damage, and utter ruination are always good for an audience. It worked for four Die Hard films.

Political folk: As much as I loathe to admit it, there's politics in this novel. It goes to motivation for the various and sundry parties. Besides: how do you negotiate being a Catholic—universal—Church? Unlike being a superpower, like the United States, you can't pick and choose who you associate with just because they're valuable to you. If that were the case, I wouldn't have a friend whose uncle is a missionary in China. And what happens when you put an African Pope who's to the right of Attila the Hun into the middle of this particular hurricane?

At the end of the day, the only people who should probably NOT read A Pius Man are those who expect a novel by way of Mitchner, or Clavell. Half of the book is filled with thoughtful, drawn out characters who are trying to think their way through the problem at hand. The other half of the book is filled with various and sundry creative ways to lay waste to large parts of Rome—from shooting up the Spanish Steps to trashing Leonardo Da Vinci airport.

And this is just the first book. Book two is the fallout, and countermoves by those bad guys who survive book one. Book three is where I recreate the Battle of Thermopylae.... if the 300 had possessed remote-detonated landmines.

Anyway, if you or any of your friends might enjoy anything listed above, you might want to join the fan page, or invite them to tag along. Or both.