First Team




We were faced in Houston.

Out of focus, but faced.

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.

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.

Now in paperback




. . . and just in time for Christmas.