New Novel Progress: The line between fiction and history.

I've been working on the part of the new novel where the operation is coming together, all the undercover operatives and their support elements are in place, and things can get nasty.

Along the way to this point, I've also tied the entirely fictional telling of the story to places, agendas, and especially people that were real or very close facsimiles of real people. That's fine, of course... This Is Fiction is clearly stated and disclaimed. But like the band in Remember When, if the fictional version can be enhanced by naturalistic references to real events, it's all a lot more fun.

Here's an example of a person in real history who lends his name and agenda to the character (or in this case, off-stage character reference) in the story. He had an amazing career for the bad guy side back in the day, was corrupt as hell, and got a bullet in the head from his own team when he was found out. In the story, in 1984, he's pulling some of the strings. A plausible fiction, that.

The real-history Arnaldo Ochoa. That link is a Wikipedia link for ease of access by readers here, but there are a few footnotes and links from that page to source material that anyone interested in more information can look at. Enjoy!

Sunday Serious.

Should be a Fun Day posting. Isn't.

Some folks may know I did a bit of 'blogging for about 5 years to support friends and interested parties in understanding (from my point of view) a lot of International Politics and News stories in a deeper context than such were being reported at the time. Every year, I'd also make a couple of commemorative posts about "my spending a day visiting old friends". Like *this*.

Same thing here. No clever tie-in to my novella's title; no writer's things. Just this:

This year is a lot more meaningful. Let out a lot of memories over the last few months. More to guide me along in the new novel writing. Had to do Musketeer Drinking rather than individual toasts this time. (1 drink for all of them. I made it a big one.)

Ich hatt' einen Kameraden...

Next post here will be back on writing and era things.

A dose of the 80's for you.

What better way to do a filler-post for this 'blog than to see if a couple of pictures couldn't sum up the early 80's media experience, television drama category? Here are a couple iconic portraits of what folks of the era though was -smoking-hot-. Enjoy!

A Writer's Device: Watch out for emergent connections.

This is about how when writing anything much longer than a short story suitable for postcard publication, there is a tendency to write to the plan, rather than just go with the story. That's for a good reason; I've mentioned recently how important it is to remember to finish writing the damn book. But with that warning readdressed, let's look at clever thing that can happen as you work in pieces and especially if you have early parts of the manuscript being edited while you write on ahead. An Emergent Connection (or explanation).

Interactive Storytellers of all eras have known about this idea. I, not having been raised in the ancient and venerable Bulshitar tribe, had to pick it up by game-mastering role playing games. That's a form of group story telling where you *have to* be aware and reactive to how the players perceive the story being told, and what connections and conclusions they reach about parts of it, or your game turns into a muddle of confusion and disappointment. Briefly. Because players don't come back to play in campaigns where what they contribute isn't integrated into the story being told.

How it works is, in short, like this: The main story is being told; hooks and character actions are interwoven as things go on, and suddenly one of the players (the contributors to the telling of the story) makes a connection as to why or how two things the game-master (the creator of the concept of the story, and most of the descriptions being told) suddenly make sense. This is not to say that every time the players connected, something they were correct, or considering all the evidence, or even being plausible. Lots of misconnections happen. As the referee as well as the lead story teller, the GM has to put those to bed to help keep everyone on track with the scenario. BUT...

Sometimes they spot a thing that the GM hadn't considered; that was so obvious and correct that it needs to be included in the story. Good game-masters spot those, the way the ancient story-circle tellers did, and weaves those into the story. An Emergent Connection becomes a later-referenced story element.

It may happen to you, as a writer, that some rereading of earlier chapters while you are writing later ones will reveal an emergent connection. I got lucky recently when my Editor was reading some of the earlier chapters of my new novel, and hit on one such connection.

There is an agent-in-place in the location where the main story mission will happen. That dude has a bit of a "take it easy, but get the work done attitude" as part of his character description. A couple of chapters later, some of the bad guys are talking together about possible threats to their plans. One bad guy dismisses any possible threat from the agent-in-place's actions for racist reasons. "Those lot are lazy and just want to go home and get drunk" and so forth.

My Editor's reaction was along the lines of "that's perfect; the Opposition will underestimate this agent, but he'll still get the job done without drawing any reaction until it's too late."

I knew, from the story concept, they'd disdain to care much about him. This made it clear that they'd actually fail to notice even when he achieved his goals.

Presto! An Emergent Connection. It's a strong enough one that I'll actually be integrating that as a story element in later chapters. The Oppos won't catch on to his having been effective until too late.

So there you go. Something to watch out for, something to pick and choose from, but something that can tighten up the plausibility and interconnectedness of your story. It sure helps mine!

Work Day Cat Picture.

This is a cat picture. With a joke about grammar. English grammar to be precise.

 

picture ruthlessly stolen from the internet. owner unknown.

 

... because I am working. Spent all day yesterday on personal wellness and research for new writing. More on the new novel today. Enjoy!

New Novel Progress: A beer with two schemers.

Rolling on things in Chapter 8 of the new novel, but wanted to keep progress reports coming.

Here's a bit from Chapter 5 that I think you'll find engaging. In Guinea-Bissau, a scene that introduces a discussion of some things that will be "complications" to the operation that our Main Character and his team will be taking on.

There wasn’t too much dust blowing around as the two of them sat at an outside table of the restaurant at the edge of the port district of Bissau City. The roads around there were all paved. Having to drink beer was bad enough, having it seasoned with Terra Cotta in powdered form would have been intolerable. That was only a passing thought for Alphonse Balzac, the French North African that had been identified by the Agency Dude Fuller as a noteworthy foreigner here. Balzac had come to this restaurant with the tables that were too low to be comfortable, for a casual meeting with someone to do business. Drinking beer was almost required when having such a discussion with a staff major of the Cuban presence.

At least Major Jorge Morales was talkative today. Some days, he was too wrapped up in his unhappiness about being in Bissau to do more than grunt, drink and wipe his mustache. He leaned on the table as he spoke, for he, like it, was of average size. Today, with the simple prompting of a topic, he was full of revolutionary vigor and a willingness to claim that that was more important than discussing getting rich on the side.

Enjoy!

A call back to some fun times in the past.

Brief post today, as I'm working on several things. For you all tracking the new novel progress, Chapter 7 is in for editing, and some small reworks have been done to make Ch 4 and 6 better. Some music call backs to the time, and one painful reminder of the Main Character's story in Remember When.

Speaking of call backs, how many of you remember the years when GenCon (the big Roleplaying Game Convention then; huge in the late 80's and early 90's) was still in Milwaukee?

Anyone remember hanging out in The Safe House?

I sure do. Then again, an old friend and I donated a thing or two to their collection, and I still have my "forever" access card to the place.

Here's a picture of the Instructor's T-Shirt from US Army C.I.'s COTA School, class of 1989, of the pattern we donated to The Safe House for their display.

Enjoy! If you go to either the Milwaukee or (new) Chicago locations of The Safe House, drink one for me!