In September of 2023, I had been recruited to join Blaine Lee Pardoe’s Land & Sea universe as an author. (See part one.)
I would be the first author who wasn’t Blaine Lee Pardoe.
Meaning that I was also the first author that they had to make a contract for.
So, while the back room folk (I assume it was more than just Brent Evans and Blaine) worked on creating a contract for me, I … cheated a little.
How do you cheat on writing a book?
I started writing it before I submitted the outline to Blaine for review.
What? I’d rather write the bloody book than talk about it. That will usually include outlining it. Besides, I almost always have the plot points in my head, I just needed to connect the dots.
As I noted in the previous post: when I started, I tried to match Blaine’s original trilogy. So my vision of the novel was very Tom Clancy—taking disparate elements from different areas and tying them together.
After Blaine corrected my thought process, centering all of this in Chicago made my job a little easier…
If you don’t count that I had to actually defend Chicago.
Now, my idea was to build up to a grand finale. Blaine informed me that his aliens, known as just “The Fish,” would hit Chicago about a year after the initial strike in Splashdown. So I figured the opening of the book would parallel events in the initial trilogy, and build up to the battle.
Initially, it was maybe not be the best idea. On Tiber’s Edge would be book 10. The readers would be deep into the war by now. Starting from the beginning? Bad idea, right?
Ehhhh…
Blaine’s side novel Ratchet’s Run (Land & Sea #4) took place in the war-torn Los Angeles basin, which had been a set piece of books one to three. The other full novels followed main characters we’d met in book one. Everything Blaine had done had been built up to. I wasn’t thrilled with hopping into everything cold.
I wasn’t certain that I could just jump right in like that. In part because I didn’t know anything about the characters, so I didn’t know what I’d do with them after what I had planned.
Every city we’d seen attacked in the Land & Sea universe had been caught flat-footed. They didn’t see anything coming. But if Chicago has a year of prep time, all I could think was: that must change things. It had to make a difference. And the readers had to see it. They had to see the logistics. They have to read the events that would lead in to the grand finale.
Especially since I made a decision early on with how the battle would end, and I wasn’t certain what would come after that.
Funny enough, I have ideas for an “after”… but only after I finished writing that first book.
As for the battle for Chicago, it would be fought over twenty miles of the Chicago shoreline. In fact, I think the Chicago shoreline is closer to twenty-nine miles.
Blaine mentioned in an offhand comment on the phone that he wanted the L-train to be a shooting platform… well, the elevated train system goes north and south, paralleling the shoreline, as well as east and west.
Logistics, they are a thing.
Also, there had to be a battle over the entire shoreline, because if there was a specifically vulnerable point, that’s where the Fish break through, clearly.
Anyway, I had some ideas of how the battle would be fought.
Then I had to design the people who would fight like this.
In Land & Sea, Blaine likes local militias. He clearly prefers them over military officers.
There’s a point where I think Richard Sharpe likes officers more than Blaine does.
 |
| Richard Sharpe and Officers |
And when it comes to “the authorities” in Chicago … let’s just say that writing it during the Biden administration gave me some tips on how everything would go down.
In terms of militia, well, it’s Chicago. So we’ve got “the Outfit” (the Mafia) and black gangs.
If you’ve read The Neck Romancer, you’ll see that I’ve done a little bit of research on the black gangs of Chicago.
Also, if you’ve read The Neck Romancer, you may see one or two similar characters. Ahem.
So, there’s my militia of asymmetrical warfare troops.
Originally, I had a mafioso and a gangbanger as two main, point of view characters. Their roles were reduced in the outline edit.
At the end of the day, I made three main characters.
First, I needed someone who thought in terms of asymmetrical warfare. The Fish are smart. They never fall for the same trick twice. Ever. So at least one of my characters needed to come up with different tricks.
Also, it gave me the excuse to eschew standard strategy and tactics.
How about someone who has nothing better to do? When the war is broken out, who’s going to be out of job?
Foreign operators. Seriously, who is going to be trying to spy on Russia when aliens are destroying everything?
So I needed someone … who used to be a spy.
I had been reading The Icarus Twin at the time, so I had the name Weston stuck in my head.
My wife made jokes about Bruce Campbell’s character “Sam Axe.”
Well, I never really used the name Samuel that often. Ever, to my recollection.
Enter Samuel Weston, he used to be a spy.
So, those jokes wrote themselves. If you don’t know those jokes, I probably shouldn’t ruin it for you.
(Okay, I probably should have used Timothy Zahn’s joke in The Icarus Twin and named him Samuel Easton. But it’s only occurring to me as I write this. Nuts. Well, it’s a little late.)
For my next character, I needed someone military. Also, I needed an ASHUR (mech) pilot.
Duh. In this book of ASHUR combat, we need someone who can combat in an ASHUR. Clearly.
As the ASHUR pilots could be anyone, I went for a woman, because I think this was the only one in the entire novel. I wanted at least one, if only for a change of character dynamic.
Since the opening trilogy had everyone with a uniform get dragged in a rush to the east and west coasts, who was going to be left in Chicago? I needed her to be an officer of sufficient rank to lead, but low enough to be left behind.
I was originally going to make her a Lieutenant, but Blaine informed me she should be of a higher rank. I talked to a friend in the air force and checked for what would be a reasonable age for a Major (he was a Colonel). So I ended up with an under-thirty redhead.
I also wanted to make certain one of our main characters was a Chicago native. Last time I checked, I recalled that there were four major demographic groups in Chicago: Irish, Polish, Italian, black. I had the Italian and black covered with the “militia” faction above. Apparently, Samantha Carter of Stargate isn’t impossible.
So, much to my surprise, I ended up with a Polish redhead named Zofia.
Awesome.
Why Polish and not Irish? Because I think I’ve got more than enough Irish chauvinism in my novels as it is. (Also, there’s a twist I half-considered putting into the book that never materialized. I was so close to doing it.)
The third character had to be a priest. Why? Well, Blaine tapped me for this because he wanted a novel based around a Crusade against the alien hordes, I felt I kinda had to.
In my parish back in New York, there was a younger priest named Pham. I honestly can’t tell you if it was his first or last name. He was always just “Father Pham.” He became the physical model for my priest. I think I called my character James Pham … no, I’m not 100% certain about his first name. Yes, he is my own character and I forgot his name.
When my wife was first widowed, she and her then-husband had attended a lot of masses in Chicago. Particularly, St. Mary of the Angels church.
It’s an Opus Dei parish, so it’s not exactly within the usual structure of the church hierarchy.
Opus Dei is a primarily lay organization. A small number (<2%) of the organization are actually priests, no matter what certain fiction writing morons will say.
But dang, is it a nice-looking church.
And it pops up in Harry Dresden’s Battle Ground, by name only.
(Oh. Yeah. I shoehorned in a Dresden statue as well. Heh heh heh.)
Also, my Pham is a different type of priest. He has a prosthetic arm, fitting for a veteran of 2040.
Let’s just say I had a few seminarians in my college philosophy classes with some interesting and varied backgrounds. One of them introduced me to the saying “Semper Fi, do or die, KILL KILL KILL!” He was going to become a Trappist monk after being a marine.
Another element Blaine wanted was to sell off everything the Catholic church owned to support the crusade against the Fish.
Do you know why that’s a problem?
They’re like gifts to the President of the United States. Those are gifts to the office, not the person in the office. Yes, it’s antique furniture, but that’s because the Vatican has owned it for three hundred years, not because it’s particularly luxurious… and because no one technically has the authority to sell it off and buy folding chairs.
Also technically, the church is bankrupt half the time. When Pope Benedict retired, the Church was a billion in the black. When Francis died, the Vatican is back in the red. Repeat as an endless loop for decades. If they started selling off everything, the banks would want their cut. (Also, Italy would panic, since the Vatican museums are a healthy chunk of their tourist industry.)
So in order to execute what Blaine wanted, I started using the “cycles”—they’re asides within the story that Blaine uses to focus on other locations that aren’t main characters. I kinda turned it into its own subplot … with its own grand finale.
No, I did not create an African Pope named Pope Pius XIII, like I did for my Saint Tommy and Pius novels…
Cough…
I created an African Pope named Julius III. Totally different guy. Obviously.
Cough…
Also, Auxiliary Bishop Xavier “XO” O’Brian made an appearance as the papal Intelligence tsar. Yes, one day, I’m going to just give that man his own book.
Oh, yeah, did I mention I get to blow up Rome? AGAIN? Isn’t that AWESOME?
Freaking Italian bureaucrats get what they deserve. Yippy kay yay.
So, those are the characters and some of the arcs, and some of the design decisions. that went into On Tiber’s Edge…
Oh, wait.
Now I have to do actual military tactics and operations. Crap.
