Writing A Pius Legacy

So, now that Silver Empire has rereleased A Pius Legacy: A Political Thriller .... what the bloody blue blazes was I thinking when I wrote that ruddy thing?
To start with, keep in mind, The Pius Trilogy was originally one 800 page monster called A Pius Man, and I had thrown in everything in that book. Largely, the problem was that the villain just wouldn't die. Even better, the bastard decided that he wanted to be Moriarty when he grew up. Not the one who appeared on the pages of Doyle's work, but the mastermind he painted to be retroactively responsible for damn near everything Holmes had to face. So, of course, this meant that the villain had backup plans. And just wouldn't die.

Granted, the "just wouldn't die" part came later. In the original one book version, the criminal mastermind suffer all of the problems he did in the full trilogy. There was no airport confrontation. There was no final battle for our heroes. Of course not. That was the climax to book one of The Pius Trilogy, not the climax to the single volume tome. So, our bad guy got away, and came back later with a follow up plan.

The follow up plan being every Left-wing psychopath's wet dream about the Catholic church: prosecute them for crimes against womyn, Muslims, Jews, etc, because the "evil church" stood against aborting children and contraception, and also launching the Crusade, the Inquisition and the Holocaust, among other lies.

So, let's kidnap the Pope and put him on trial in front of the Hague.

"Under what law?" you ask? Since the only international law in existence is natural law (that's a religious thing, can't have that) it's up to the most corrupt group of scoundrels in existence to make it up.

Enter the UN.

Yes, the United Nations! Home to more kleptocrats and dictators than anyone realizes. Did you know that about 2/3rds of the UN aren't democracies? That's right. How else would Syria and Sudan end up on commissions for arms and human rights, respectively. If you ever wonder how the UN rules against the United States so often, you may not have to wonder anymore.

But what would the UN do to prompt the kidnap and prosecution of the Pope? Easy: passing an International RICO statute. This is another wet dream of Lefty idiots, using it against the Catholic church for "hiding pedophiles" (funny, there is a higher percentage of pedophile teachers, yet no one is arresting the teacher's union).

In case you don't know, one of the things RICO does is confiscate any and all proceeds from a crime.

In short: it makes for a wonderful way to commit a legal heist.

So, the UN passes a RICO "law," it passes, game over.

"But wait," you say, "how could the security council allow it?" To which I answer: the Security Council is who? The UK, the US, Russia, China and France. The French need the money, Putin cares only for Putin, the Chinese hate Catholics, the UK doesn't care one way or another (remember, the English ruling class have their own church, and the Monarch is the pontiff), and the US?  Well, hey, that would require a President who thinks that nuns should be made to pay for birth control, sterilization, and abortions. And that would never happen....

Oh wait. It did.

As you can see, the last President was fairly good for the trilogy to move forward.

In the one volume A Pius Man, the entire incident with the Pope ran only about 50, maybe 70 pages. It was an interlude that made the next part necessary. When it came time to carve up the book, well, that became a problem. If I left in the legal fiction needed for the final action against the Vatican, that would be a really long book with talking at the front and fighting at the back. If I kept the kidnapping and trial of the Pope, that would be a really short book. What could I do to keep everything and have three novels?

Answer: Don't just kidnap the Pope. After all, there are other ways to wage war.

Hence a political thriller. After all, war is politics by other means... or is it politics is war by other means?

Either way, time for the villains to wage their own political battle. It's one part propaganda, one part bullets.

And don't kidnap just the Pope. Kidnap some of our heroes, and have a long, painful conversation. Though those people who liked what I did to Mister Ryan (I presume there's one of you) will have to settle for a more vague account of what I put him through.

Not to mention that a lot of this book involved a more thorough introduction to the characters. Because I was so damn tired of reviews saying they couldn't keep track of the characters, my mission was to compensate.... I may have overdone it a touch.

I won't, like so many, try to compare it to Empire Strikes Back.  It's a part two where the threat escalates, with a To be Continued at the end. That's it.

But yeah, there's a reason that Jim Butcher likes beating up his characters: you never know exactly what the results are going to look like.

Then the fun really starts.