Red Dragon Rising: Shadows of War



The new series is set a few years into the future and involves a world war started as a result of global climate change.

We're working on some pages that will be a sub site from Larry's main site; mine will link over there as well. Details as they become available, a little closer to the launch.

How'd the French get there?

What the hell were the French doing in Vietnam anyway?

Compressing a few hundred years of history into a couple of sentences, like other European powers, the French started trading with Asia during the sixteenth century, establishing small communities* throughout southeast Asia. During this period, the area of Vietnam was actually two different kingdoms, both with strong ties to China. China had given up direct rule in the 15th century, but still exerted great influence and, at various times, took what amounted to tribute and/or tried to regain direct control of the area.

During the 19th century, France decided it wanted Vietnam as a colony, primarily for financial reasons, though also because Catholic missionaries wanted to save souls there. They fought a series of battles, first in the south, and then in the north, defeating the locals and Chinese mercenaries (who were operating with their government's blessing and maybe money, but I digress . . .). They did this with relatively small numbers of troops; the battles that took place involved only a few hundred to a few thousand men.

Why Vietnam? Besides saving souls, French businessmen got raw materials and rice real cheap. But the colonial administration was less than enlightened - torture, concentration camps, the works - and the government had to deal with various rebellion movements right up until World War II, when the Nazi conquest of Vietnam made Indochina a de facto Japanese colony, a key base during the Asian portion of the war.

So why were the commies so strong there? Two reasons: Because the communist party provided the structure and discipline necessary for an anti-French movement to survive the repression, and China (and Russia) supplied aid to their fellow travelers. When the war ended, the communist-dominated liberation movement led by Ho Chi Minh quickly moved to seize the country. The liberated French government actually concluded a treaty with Uncle Ho after the war, which effectively would have turned control of the country over to a national government, but it was clear that the two sides were working with different aims -- the French wanted Vietnam back as a colony, and Ho wanted to establish a communist state. Things quickly came to a head . . . and every other body part.

* If I call them colonies, you're going to think of America, and that's not really a good parallel. And yeah, I'm just going to gloss over the whole protectorate/colony thing, which distinguished different parts and times of the administration. The French arrangements were even more complicated than the British, but then that's France for you.

First Team



Is this thing on???

At least my nose is in focus . . .

First Team: Soul of the Assassin

So how do you buy the book, Jim?

Here's a link to the Amazon sale site:

http://www.amazon.com/Larry-Bonds-First-Team-Assassin/dp/0765307146/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1210845616&sr=8-1

And Barnes & Noble:

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Larry-Bonds-First-Team/Larry-Bond/e/9780765307149/?itm=1

And Merritt Books, my local bookstore . . .

http://www.booksite.com/texis/scripts/oop/click_ord/showdetail.html?sid=1967&isbn=0765307146&buyable=0

The 'real' Ferg, as if there were such a thing

One of the great things about Ferg – the real Ferg – was that he had a way of bending space entirely around him without making you mad at him.

Late one night he called me in Xxxxx, waking me up. The conversation went something like this:

Me: Ferg? WTF????
Ferg: Hey.
Me: Where are you?
Ferg: I’m in Yyyyy.
Me: You’re supposed to be in Zzzzz tomorrow.
Ferg: Yeah. Probably I won’t make it.
Me: Fug...
Ferg: I might be able to make it, if you picked me up at the train station in Aaaaa and drove me to Bbbbbb. I can catch a ride from there.
Me: What am I, your friggin’ taxi now?
Ferg: I was just saying . . .
I picked him up. The bottle he pulled from his coat only partly made up for it.

First Team, fiction & reality . . .

More on reality and fiction, and where you draw the line:

Most of Soul of the Assassin is set in Bologna, Italy. It takes place in the city center – and it really is the city center, though we had to fictionalize a few things, including some of the buildings where the action takes place. One interior in particular had to be changed around . . . well, it’s actually more or less the same, just re-purposed. And repainted.

It’s kind of cool to look at real buildings and imagine your characters moving through them. That’s one of the things that makes books different for writers than readers. There’s a scene in one of the Deep Black books where Charlie and Lia are in an elevator talking. Or not talking, which is a problem for them. It’s an emotional scene, and I’m sure readers focus on what’s going on between them.

But for me, the scene is all about that elevator, which I rode up and down in for a week while researching the book.

Damn thing made me so claustrophobic, I started taking the stairs.

Speaking Larry Bond . . .

I mentioned Larry Bond in my last post. Larry is the lead author on the First Team series, and a great, easy going guy, real easy to work with.

He once said something about collaboration – it’s the sort of art that succeeds when both people do eighty percent of the work.

I'm probably misquoting him, since he's more eloquent than that.

Anyway, I always say Larry does the eighty percent that's good . . . I put in everything else.

A bullshit tour de force . . .

Speaking of mixing fiction with fantasy . . .

(Margaret B. Jones was really Margaret Seltzer. Everything she says in this interview is completely made up, as was her “memoir.”)

Real life/real fiction

People sometimes ask how real the books are write are, meaning I guess whether the things that are described in them really happened. I usually have a lot of trouble answering because there are always many real things in the book, and it’s hard to explain exactly where the line is sometimes.

In the First Team books, for example, the lead character – Bob Ferguson – is based on a real person. Obviously, he finds himself in somewhat different situations, and this is a work of fiction, not reality. But when I’m working on the book, I see Ferg – the real Ferg – in my head.

My memory of the real Ferg pretty much guides what the character does. There are plot necessities and the like, but his attitude toward life and the rest are spot on.

Or at least I think they are.

I don’t know if that information is useful at all to the reader. Larry Bond and I once had a semi-long discussion on the relationship between real and not real characters. His take, if I’m remembering it right, was that he really didn’t want to know. He preferred to think it was all made up – it was almost as if that made the spell we fall under when we read a good yarn that much better.

And in a way, of course, the characters in novels are all made up, even Ferg. The real person is not the fictional character, no matter how close the resemblance. The novelist has to remain completely in control of the fiction, something that never happens in real life. (Especially where Ferg was concerned.) There are always differences, no matter how tightly drawn the character is, points where reality fades and fiction takes over.

The real Ferg, for example, didn’t have cancer. (That part of the character comes from someone else, actually.) And I don’t think the real Ferg could dance as well as the fictional character can, though I can't quite recall ever seeing him dance.

Same guy, though. Plop the real Ferg down in Bologna, have him target a sniper who’s actually targeting him – basically everything that happens in Soul of the Assassin would happen in real life.

Well . . . I suspect the real Ferg would have figured out what was going on by the second chapter, ending the book far too soon . . .

Larry's right - better to think of it as all made up.

Out next week:

First Team - Soul of the Assassin





. . . . except for some reason I keep hearing the title as "Sold the Assassin," which kind of puts a different spin on things.

Now in paperback




. . . and just in time for Christmas.