Dreamland & Evanescence
This was another song from that same CD that set the emotional tone for the characters.
More than the other series I've done, Dreamland has always had an epic feel. The heroes strove to go far beyond themselves, and the individual stories were about things larger than what was going on on the surface.
Showing posts with label dale brown. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dale brown. Show all posts
'My Immortal' & Dreamland
Zen is the hero of Dreamland, but the real engine of the series has been the relationship between him and his wife Bree.
It's a love story, really - about his struggle to stay connected with her while overcoming his physical limitations and surviving the long deployments and other nasty stuff that happens in the book.
There have been times working on the books that I started to lose that thread - the epic sense between them. And of all things a music video by Evanescence helped get me back on track. The song somehow hit the emotional sweep at the heart of the characters.
I don't usually write with music playing - it injects its own agenda into the words, obviously a problem - but I ended up playing the song over and over as I worked on one of the books. I go back to it every so often to remind myself of the character arcs; I can't hear the music or see the video without thinking of them.
Zen is the hero of Dreamland, but the real engine of the series has been the relationship between him and his wife Bree.
It's a love story, really - about his struggle to stay connected with her while overcoming his physical limitations and surviving the long deployments and other nasty stuff that happens in the book.
There have been times working on the books that I started to lose that thread - the epic sense between them. And of all things a music video by Evanescence helped get me back on track. The song somehow hit the emotional sweep at the heart of the characters.
I don't usually write with music playing - it injects its own agenda into the words, obviously a problem - but I ended up playing the song over and over as I worked on one of the books. I go back to it every so often to remind myself of the character arcs; I can't hear the music or see the video without thinking of them.
The hero in a wheelchair
One of the things that's always interested me about the Dreamland series is the fact that the main character, Zen Stockard, is a paraplegic.
I don't think there are too many other thrillers, let alone military thrillers, where the hero is a guy in a wheelchair. But we've never really gotten much feedback about that. (As a matter of fact, I can recall only one letter, rather cryptic, that addressed it directly. And we get a fair amount of correspondence, mostly electronic.)
Maybe it's because no one really thinks of Zen as being handicapped. True, he doesn't have use of his legs. But he is able to succeed - and struggle - in other ways. He gets cranky just like the rest of us, though over different things, like the two inch rise between the sidewalk and the restaurant that is almost impossible to navigate over.
But hey - a guy who's saved the free world a few times over is entitled . . .
One of the things that's always interested me about the Dreamland series is the fact that the main character, Zen Stockard, is a paraplegic.
I don't think there are too many other thrillers, let alone military thrillers, where the hero is a guy in a wheelchair. But we've never really gotten much feedback about that. (As a matter of fact, I can recall only one letter, rather cryptic, that addressed it directly. And we get a fair amount of correspondence, mostly electronic.)
Maybe it's because no one really thinks of Zen as being handicapped. True, he doesn't have use of his legs. But he is able to succeed - and struggle - in other ways. He gets cranky just like the rest of us, though over different things, like the two inch rise between the sidewalk and the restaurant that is almost impossible to navigate over.
But hey - a guy who's saved the free world a few times over is entitled . . .
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