When starting out in writing, they always say, “write what you know.” I have had a lot of jobs throughout the years. (Some of you old farts may turn your nose up at a 27 year old saying “through the years,’' but hear me out.) Since high school, I have had aspirations that change with the season. I go all in on a lifelong career for about a year and a half. As the tide shifts, I read a book, watch a movie, or talk to a friend and decide “that is where I need to be.” Though it wears on my long term sanity, it has shown me many sides of this world and has made me probably one of very few people to have worn a dance belt on stage, shot an M2 Browning, done CPR in a moving ambulance, and climbed a 2000 foot cliff. From there, I write.
The largest part of The Captain of the Crew that I draw from personal experience is the medical descriptions. To date the longest career that I’ve managed is in emergency medicine. In 2017 I took a Wilderness First Responder class that peaked my interest and followed it up in 2018 with an EMT certification. I worked in an array of fields including interfacility transport, and event medicine. In 2022 I upgraded to Paramedic and now work on an ambulance in New Jersey doing 911 response. My time in the field gave me an insight on how the sick are handled and a general understanding of the hospital process. The details of the hospital rooms, staff, and equipment come from hours of touring inpatient rooms. (Stay tuned for a later blog post with an excerpt from the book about medical existentialism.)
I also drew a little inspiration from my time in the Army National Guard for Doc’s character. I graduated Basic Training as a combat medic in 2020 and expressed a lot of my opinions in his history. I grew up in a very pacifist household that focused more on intelligence and creation than following orders so the Army was a bit of a culture shock. I don’t know what I was expecting.
Everything else is mostly from my imagination. I have no background in finances or banking so pushing the plot into the future gave me some leeway to make the story what I want without having to be strictly accurate. Angiocoin was a concept that I made up to plug a plot hole. (More on the art of plot holes in the next post.) The tech that the crew uses is mostly made up of concepts we have now but more advanced. (Check back for a blog post about the origin of the technology in the book.) I don’t actually even know if the car cover is feasibly possible but it sounds cool so, fuck it.
Check out the book here! www.linktr.ee/jacksonrezen

The Captain of The Crew