With the first book of the Dark Covenant series complete, the logical thing to do would be to begin the second. Oh no, that’s not good enough for me. Instead, I decided to begin a completely different series. This one takes me away from fantasy and returns me to science-fiction.

So, October was filled with swords, magic, castles and monsters while November has been trying think several thousand years in the future. December will be back to fantasy, January sci-fi and so on. If nothing I say makes any sense for a while, don’t hold it against me.

What has been interesting to me is how much I haven’t pulled from either genre when crafting the worlds and the characters.

Dark Covenant features creatures who can fly-something not at all new to fantasy. I’ve been constantly challenging myself to really make that race legitimate. Where they live had to change, how they got from place to place had to be different, how they disposed of their dead, do they need shields, bows and arrows, swords, so on and so forth. I’ve questioned everything. The biggest piece was how would an army of flying soldiers fight? There isn’t much historically to pull from when it comes to flying creatures using medieval combat methods, so I’ve been pulling from modern aerial combat tactics. Dog fighting, bombing, long range siege from the sky-it’s really been fun!

Then, I began the science-fiction series. The world building is very Blade Runner-esque, but the main character has been a combination of so many things that have little-to-nothing to do with sci-fi. When writing him, Josey Wales, Doc Holliday, & Wyatt Earp are at the forefront of his past, his behavior and his looks. Throw in a splash of James Bond and you have Ash Merick.

It’s a bit of reverse-engineering, but it’s added a sense of realism to an otherwise foreign world. The trouble with both genres is giving enough of the familiar to make the unbelievable believable. Pulling from spy-thrillers, westerns and our own history has made things a much more exciting thing to write and hopefully, that will translate into those who get the chance to read it!

Oh, and…Happy Thanksgiving!