Steven Becker's Blog: Steven Becker's Storylines

This will be my second season as a guide for the Florida Keys Wildlife Society’s Full Moon Kayak Trips . We head out from the Old Wooden Bridge Marina on Big Pine Key, across the channel and first to a mangrove tunnel before paddling around the northern tip of No Name Key. A few of us got together this past Saturday to check out and trim the tunnel. Afterwards we paddled through another longer tunnel to a salt pond, which is basically a tidal lake.

Anytime you go off-road here things can get interesting. This adventure proved the rule. The tunnel was long and difficult with branches we had to climb over or limbo under. Once we hit the lake, we felt like we were in a different world. Surprisingly there wasn’t a lot of fish or bird life, but that might be due to the tide and heat.

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When you come across a straight line in nature, it is a good possibility that man has been there. This was the case when we hit a straight path, with what appeared to be stepping stones crossing the pond. On the southern side was what had at one time been a house. Some satellite maps showed a mobile home which may have been destroyed by Huricanne Irma. All that is left was a house pad and a dirt road.

Across the way there is some kind of structure. Google Earth shows a trailer, but it is difficult to see an access road.

This will require further investigation, but for now it should work nicely for a location in the next Mac Travis Adventure.

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The Naval Air Station on Boca Chica Key is one of the main locations for Wood’s Karma. The NAS has appeared in several books and is part of Wood’s backstory as he served their during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The Navy owns the entire key which at 7.34 square miles makes it second to Big Pine Key in size. Most of the island is salt marshes and brush with about 40% used by the NAS. Boca Chica Field lies on the south side of US 1 while the “Submarine Pens” are the only feature besides a radar dome on the north side.

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The NAS is a training station. VFC - 111 also known as the Sun Downers are the resident wing, flying F5s as the adversary in training flights that can be seen over the Lower Keys and adjacent waters. Visitors have use of the marina, beach, and the only bowling alley in the Keys.

I’ve been able to visit the area a few times while writing Wood’s Karma. The first was by kayak where I was able to see the marina, harbor, and surrounding waters up close. Second was with a neighbor who works on base and gave me a tour. The last was the Southernmost Air Spectacular which featured the Blue Angels.

The base is much the same as when Wood first served there, minus a few buildings that have been demolished.

Wood’s Karma is the final story in the Early Adventures of Mac and Wood. It’s a story I’ve dodged for far too long. In Wood’s Reef, the first book in the present day series, Wood just appears on the island. I never dealt with how he got it, or was allowed to stay. Wood’s Karma answers those questions and more.

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I come across all kinds of interesting tidbits while researching background material for my books. Some are just facts and figures, others lead me down rabbit holes. Once in a while, as in Across the Isthmus, I find the story in the research.

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My current work in progress is the next installment of the Tides of Fortune series. Two years ago, I left the gang sailing out of San Fransisco Bay under duress. My intention with this book was to bring them back to the Caribbean. Taking them around Cape Horn would have been fun, but I didn’t feel I could do it justice without visiting the area. I prefer to use locations that I am familiar with in my stories and Tierra del Fuego and Patagonia, while on my bucket list seemed to unique an area to do it justice.

The time period for the book is the mid 1850s. As it turns out, I wasn’t the only one searching for a faster route to the Atlantic. The narrow isthmuses across Nicaragua and Panama had attracted attention as possible sites for a canal. I haven’t visited either country, but have spent time in Costa Rica and felt comfortable writing about the area. Now I had to decide which one to use, which is where the rabbit hole opened up.

We all know that Panama won, but Nicaragua had the more interesting history.

Cornelius Vanderbilt had been given the rights to build a canal across Nicaragua. Though the canal was never built, utilizing the San Juan River, Lake Nicaragua, and a stage coach run between between the lake and Pacific Ocean, his Accessory Transit Company carried two thousand passengers a month.

Another American, William Walker upset his plans with his successful filibuster. Walker and three hundred men, under contract with the rebel Democrats, took over the country with the intent of making it a slave state of the United States. His rule over the country, recognized by then president Franklin Pierce, ended less than two years later when troops backed by Vanderbilt took control of the country.

Those of us that follow politics are familiar with the term filibuster as a political procedure to prolong debate in the Senate. There is an other definition that I came across while researching the book.

A filibuster (from the Spanish filibustero), also known as a freebooter, is someone who engages in an unauthorized military expedition into a foreign country or territory to foster or support a political revolution or secession.

Walker left from San Fransisco at about the same time as the Tides gang did. A meeting was inevitable and was the missing link in the story.

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My feelings about law enforcement fall into two categories: the men and women who serve and the agencies themselves. I totally support the people and have a general disdain for the agencies. My characters generally feel the same.

Political agendas aside, each agency has their own mission which is deployed through their strategy and tactics. It is up to the people to do this. From anecdotal experience, my own and others, the 80:20 rule applies to the men and women who serve. Eighty percent are good; twenty percent not so much. In my books I have the good guys, like Kurt Hunter, who is a Special Agent for the National Parks Service and the main character in my Backwater books. Others have been bad guys. Wood’s Trial will showcase several of these characters from my recent experience sitting on a jury in Key West.

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This all brings me to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission or FWC. As their name suggests they were originally game wardens. Through the merger of several other agencies including the Florida Marine Patrol, they have assumed powers much greater than protecting our resources. Their vehicles and vessels boldly display their unstated mission: STATE LAW ENFORCEMENT.

Florida is not an easy state to patrol. With 1,350 miles of coastline and 4,500 islands, managing the marine resources is a monumental task. Add to that the almost 6 million acres of public hunting land and you have challenges.

This is where the mission, strategy, and tactics come into play.

I’ll get into conservation in a separate post. What I’d like to cover here is policing. I’ll be the first to admit that having a dual mandate of wildlife conservation and law enforcement is an impossible task. Committing resources to one, will starve the second.

Life safety should be the priority of law enforcement. The FWC (not the only agency guilty here) choses to do so in what I think of as a passive way, mainly with random checks. I’ve been pulled over and boarded several times by officers—without cause. The officers will sit at inlets, boat ramps, and bridges, randomly pulling over boaters. When they are finished with one, the next one that passes gets pulled over.

They are thorough, checking licenses, boat registration, safety gear and then searching coolers and fish boxes. I understand that the threat keeps people honest. What it doesn’t do is catch the real offenders.

Sitting in front of the inlet to my small neighborhood in Big Pine Key and pulling over residents is not going to clean up anything and in my view is harassment. It is the same as placing a road block on your street.

Meanwhile, there have been several accidents, a few fatal in the last few weeks here. The two day Sportsmen’s Season, and then the official opening of lobster season are two of the peak tourist weeks and a crazy time here.

With hundreds of boats and divers in the water there is a high risk of injury or death. In this regard, I believe the standard FWC tactic of random checks does a disservice to the community it is intended to serve. Yes, some people don’t follow the rules—most do.

My specific issue is the dive flags which are intended to protect people in the water. They are misused and misunderstood, and should be a major point of emphasis for the FWC, not stopping boats coming into my neighborhood.

Displaying the red flag with white diagonal stripe from the highest point of the vessel, is intended to proved a barrier, three hundred feet in open water, and one hundred feet in inlets, channels and restricted areas. Divers, through the boats flag, or a buoy with a flag, are required to stay within that distance and boaters are required to respect it.

Education in an important tactic in enforcement. Most everyone knows that the legal recreational limit is six lobsters per person. The size limit is also well know. So why not the simple safety measure that protects the divers.

It had become commonplace to see dive flags displayed when boats are running and even docked. Some people never take them down. I’m sure, at some point, everyone has forgotten to remove the flag when the divers are out of the water. I am certainly guilty of that, but the incidence of misuse is so rampant that I believe it is ignorance rather than a mistake.

As the flags are ignored and misused, they become less of a safety measure and boaters start to ignore them altogether.

This is a problem the FWC can and should address. Instead of no-cause boardings, why not target people that are actually doing something wrong, and solve a potential life safety issue in the process.

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I received my first jury summons as a full time resident of the Keys. I’ve been called before, in California and Tampa. Both times were a near miss to be selected. That was okay with me. This time I actually wanted to get selected. I hoped to get a story and some characters out of the experience and I got both.

The 68 prospective jurors were quickly and randomly whittled down to thirty. As the clerk called names I was okay heading home as it was of course a nicer than usual day. I was starting to plan my fishing trip when my number was among the last few called.

The remaining 30 of us were ushered to a different courtroom where the judge had each of us answer a series of questions. I was a little wary about stating my profession as an author. I did but emphasized my 30 years as a general contractor. The judge mentioned that there were quite a few characters around the room.

I wasn’t sure if I would select me to serve, but someone did, and I was called to be one of the seven (six jurors and one alternate) jurors.

The prosecutor gave her opening statement laying out the charges and how she intended to prove them. Then things got interesting. The defendant, who chose to represent himself, though I have no idea why, stood up and went on a rant. He claimed his innocence and how the charges had already been dropped, but now he was in jail and on trial. Aside from the show, he offered no evidence to contradict the prosecutor.

The defendant did not say a word after the opening statement. He presented no case or evidence so our decision came down to whether the prosecution had established his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

The witness are all character worthy, but I’ve got spots for Mac and Trufante.

The verdict was quick and easy relieving me of any feeling that I had done the wrong thing.

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I’m not sure how many past or future jurors will get a novels worth of inspiration from a two day trial.

Several months ago, I released Wood’s Reward, the second, and much delayed, installment in the Early Adventures of Mac and Wood. My intent has always been to fill in the gap between Wood’s Relic, when Mac and Wood meet, to the first in the now ten-year-old world of Wood’s Reef, where Mac becomes the main character.

I’ve wanted to tell Trufante’s story, which is featured in Wood’s Quest, and how Wood got the island.

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Writing in the Early series takes some intestinal fortitude. For one, the books are not quite a popular as the main series. Money is not my primary motivation for writing, but with REC 90, the ethanol free gas I use in my boat, hovering at five bucks a gallon, I’ve got to make some coin. I know, I’m pretty much retired, live in the Keys, and fish a lot, but still…

The other, and bigger, reason is that I don’t want to screw it up. Writing in the earlier world, I have to be aware of what I have written in what would be the future.

That’s a problem for me. Once I write something, I totally forget it. I’m constantly asking my editor, who did what or where. The easy answer is that I’m a pantser, not a plotter. I’ve tried all kinds of methods to outline my stories, but none work. My characters tend to do what they do and constantly go off script. Keeping a record of Mac and Wood’s world or a series bible, is way out of my reach.

I’m just starting on the next installment in the Tides of Fortune series and find that in the two years since the last one, I have forgotten everything. I’m going to have to reread Golden Gate and take notes before I get too far into the new book and screw it up.

Another reason, is that writing is a kind of catharsis for me. I have introduced characters based on ex-girlfriends, ex-wives, old conflicts, and even a National Parks Volunteer who pissed me off by not allowing our dog to go on our kayak at Everglades National Park. Some characters are based on the good guys I’ve encountered. Wood is based on an old carpenter I used to work with who we used to call the “Old Boy.” Some of them I memorialize, others I just kill to make me feel better. Pip, from the Mac Travis series, is the only character that is named after his real-life counterpart. Before introducing him, I made him sign a waiver that any complaining about my representation of him would see him killed off in the next book—in a violent and painful way.

This all brings me back to Wood’s Quest, which contains Trufante’s back story. The Cajun had been in all the Mac Travis books, and I have given snippets of his past. Now I have to remember what I’ve written about him—not an easy task for me.

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From our travels in France and Germany, it became necessary to defind the difference between a palace and a castle—even if it was just for tourist purposes. What I came up with was that a castle was defendable and a palace not. Not surprisingly the dictionary Miriam agreed with me.

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Castle - A large building, typically of the medieval period, fortified against attack with thick walls, battlements, towers, and in many cases a moat.

Palace - the official residence of a sovereign, archbidshop, bishop, or other exalted person.

We visited both and one of each found their way into Storm Keep.

Haut - Barr is a fortress built on three sandstone pinnacles above the town of Saverne, which is outside Strasbourg. The castle was known, and still could be, as the Eye of Alsace as it was possible to see miles of the surrounding area, from the spire of the cathdral in Strasbourg to the Black Forest in Germany.

Erected in 1170 by the Bishop of Strasbourg to control the Zorn Valley, it was transformed and restored in the 16th century by Bishop Jean de Manderscheid, who frequently lived there, which becomes a critical part of the book.

A key feature of the castle is the Pont du Diable (Devil’s Bridge). The construction of this bridge spanning the void was so complicated that the bishop is said to have asked the devil himself to build it in exchange for the soul of the first man to cross the bridge. But it was a stray dog that he made go over it, angering the devil who stamped his foot so hard that he left his mark on the rock.

Palais Rohan sits across the plaza from the Cathedral. is the former residence of the prince-bishops and cardinals of the House of Rohan, an ancient French noble family originally from Brittany. It is a major architectural, historical, and cultural landmark in the city. It was built next to Strasbourg Cathedral in the 1730s, from designs by Robert de Cotte, and is considered a masterpiece of French Baroque architecture. Since its completion in 1742, the palace has hosted a number of French monarchs such as Louis XV, Marie Antoinette, Napoleon and Joséphine, and Charles X.

The palace has been transformed into three museums. We visited the Museum of Decorative arts on the ground floor, which contains many of the original furnishings. The museum houses parts of the first two versions of the astronomical part and plays a part in the story.

The palaces we visited were interesting, but I’ll take a good castle any day.

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The vins-des-hospices-de-strasbourg was an off the beaten path spot. The cellars which date back to 1395, play a prominent role in Storm Keep.

The entrance is in a back corner of the hospital, not well marked, and down a narrow stairway. The modest entry leads to a small showroom, featuring wines from the area. From there, you descend a few steps and enter the actual caves.

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The cellar was originally created to support the hospital, through both payments of wine and grain from local farmers and larger grants from the noble class. Each patient was allowed a ration of wine each day from the stores.

The structure is long rectangular room, about twelve feet underground. Ventilation ports and visible along the top.

Many unique casks line the walls, many filled with wine. To the end, behind an iron grate are three historical barrels dating from 1472, 1519 and 1525 are still enthroned in the Historic Cellar.

The 1472 cask still contains wine, making it the oldest of the world aged in a barrel, and has only been served only three times in five centuries.

1519 is an important year in the book and that particular cask offers the Storms an important clue as they try and track down an historic artifact.

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This is not a theological discussion, but there is some irony in the astronomic clock being in the Strasbourg Cathedral. Properly known as: Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Strasbourg, the cathedral and the clock, the plaza, and the palace across the street are all locations featured in Storm Keep.

The cathedral is the dominating feature in the old town area of Strasbourg. It is the tallest structure in the region, and at 466’ held the title of the worlds tallest building from1647 to 1874. Construction of the sandstone cathedral started in 1015 and ended in 1439. The architecture is predominantly Romanesque, with some Gothic intrusions as the style gained popularity during the four centuries it took to complete the cathedral.

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Inside the cathedral is the final of three iterations of a mechanical astronomical clock. The still-functioning—and accurate—mechanism is a mix of art, clockmaking, mathematics, and mechanics. The gold hands of the clock show mean solar time; the silver hands show Central European Time.

The clock features a planetary calendar, which shows the current positions of the sun and moon, and a mechanical rooster. Every day at 12:30 the rooster crows and apostles move around the clock. We waited in a rather long line to see the show. Crammed into the alcove we saw a movie detailing the clock’s history, and saw the “show.”

Parts of the early versions from the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries can be found across the plaza in the museum in the Rohan Palace.

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