Showing posts with label military heroes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label military heroes. Show all posts
Friday, January 7, 2011

Heroes and Choices

    posted by Nancy

    Today we welcome back Jennifer St. Giles. With her comes her new alter ego, J. L. Saint. They're launching a series with plenty of boom and lots of angst. Writing this series involved difficult choices for both Jennifer and her hero, and she's here to tell us about them. Welcome, Jennifer!

    Choice is a word that contains a treasure trove of meanings and today I’m going to explore two of them because so much about my newest release, Collateral Damage, Silent Warrior Series Book I, involves aspects of choice, in both the writing of the book and within the pages of the story itself. In fact, it can be said that even the act of writing a story, of making a story exciting and well worth reading, is all about the choices an author makes. LOL. I could likely go on and on about it, but that would be a book in itself.

    Firstly, I had no choice but to write Collateral Damage. As I’ve mentioned in other blogs, I wrote the proposal for this book back in 2000. It was a “what if” concept that grabbed me and wouldn’t let go. What if someone had a large-scale bio-friendly answer to our energy crisis? What if they set out to destroy the oil market? How much power could they gain? How easily could they manipulate the political factions in the world in order to accomplish what they wanted? I sent the proposal out and waited.

    Then in 2001 9/11 happened and no one would touch the book, especially from a romance writer. The book sat on the shelf and yelled at me for nine years as I wrote gothic historical murder mysteries and a contemporary paranormal werewolf series.

    With every world event that unfolded from 2001 to 2009 Collateral Damage kept yelling louder and louder, Write Me! Write Me! Write Me! So, for my own sanity, when the downturn in the publishing market came and I received an unexpected break, I had no other choice but to finally write Collateral Damage. And I was very lucky to have Samhain Publishing choose to take a chance on a book that other publishers said there was no market for.

    Secondly, is the concept that life is all about the choices we make, and yes, sometimes the choices made by those closest to us. The good ones and bad ones all mesh together to weave the fabric of our lives. But more importantly, the choices that we make, regardless of what others choose, determine the direction in which our lives will flow.

    One of the themes of Collateral Damage, centers around the realization that we all suffer collateral damage from the choices made by others in our lives. What defines us, what shapes our future, is how we chose to react to that damage and what choices we make from that point on. Both the hero, Jack, and the heroine, Lauren, are victims of collateral damage in this book in a multitude of ways and the story of how they overcome this positively and unite is a thrill ride of action peppered with hot passion.

    I know that over the past couple of years there has been collateral damage in my own life and in the lives of those I love. I have been faced with difficult choices and have had to face the harsh reality of choices others have made. Finding the right path through problems and the courage to walk it isn’t easy. This is why I love reading good books.

    What? What does reading have to do with life’s problems? When I read about hero and heroines overcoming what sometimes seem to be impossible odds, when I read about their pain and healing, I am inspired in my own life to keep moving in a positive direction. To keep believing in the good. To keep believing in the power of love. Too many years ago to count, this is why I put my pen to the page and began writing stories. So, I invite you this New Year to reflect upon the choices you’ve made, measure their worth, and determine to make every choice in 2011 a wise one.

    Damn the consequences, full speed ahead, is injured soldier, Jack Hunter’s, only choice when the American Businessman he killed two weeks ago on a failed mission in Lebanon shows up in the news as having been murdered just yesterday in Brazil.

    The story he’s being told doesn’t mesh with the bits and pieces he remembers, and he is determined to uncover the truth. But he gets more than he can handle when he hunts down the businessman’s widow.

    First, Lauren Collins’s sex appeal sucker punches Jack then the assassin after her and her twin sons comes close to succeeding. Jack puts everything on the line to save Lauren and the son’s of the man he killed, but loses the one thing he didn’t know he could—his heart.


    Meet Jack “DT” Hunter…

    Shorter of breath and one day closer to death...

    Pink Floyd's "Time" hammered through Sergeant First Class Jack Hunter's brain as he tightened his grip on the treadmill and ran harder, his heart pounding, his lungs burning. Rage tinged with fear made for a potent Power Bar that fueled his drive. Sweat poured from his brow and his body screamed for relief, but he couldn't stop. Not yet. His vision dimmed, and President Anderson's address on the overhead TV calling for a swift but rational retaliation to al-Qaeda's latest attack became nothing but a blur in his mind.

    Life often hinged on the details, those seemingly insignificant microscopic events that most people trampled over obliviously. He'd trained to notice the details and to remember them. Yet no matter how hard he tried, his memory of the mission in Lebanon remained a kaleidoscope of combat images and one man's mocking blue eyes...Jack clenched his teeth against the rising pain inside him. He took being team leader to heart both on and off the battlefield. The mission and his men were his responsibility. Rico, Pecos and Neil were his Delta brothers, and it killed him that he could only remember bits and pieces of what happened.

    They're here, DT. They're alive! Will Taylor's-aka Pecos-distorted voice echoed in Jack's mind, sucking him down a long tunnel of fragmented memories... Suddenly Jack's head jerked back as his headphones were snatched off and Lt. Col. Roger Weston, his Delta Team commander, whom the teams called Commander Weston because anything less didn't fit his hard-edged charisma, got in his face. "Son of a bitch, DT. Are you trying to kill yourself?"

    ***

    Go forth, choose wisely, and Enjoy!

    J.L. Saint aka Jennifer St. Giles
    Jlsaint.com

    Read the full excerpt at http://jenniferstgiles.com/content/bookshelf/collateral-damage/#more-87 and for a chance to win an ARC email to jlsaintwrites@yahoo.com how you would choose for Lauren and Jack to meet each other for the first time.

    For more about Jennifer and J. L. Saint, visit her website.

    Who is your favorite soldier hero? What choices have you seen romance heroes and heroines make that were particularly heart-wrenching? What's your favorite book or movie about a survivor?Source URL: https://idontwanttobeanythingotherthanme.blogspot.com/search/label/military%20heroes
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Saturday, April 18, 2009

Armed and Fabulous

    by Nancy

    A friend of mine once said that the two types of garments most flattering to almost every man were the tuxedo and the military uniform. I think she had a point. Uniforms and tuxedos square the shoulders and frame the body as other garments just don't quite. Even the less dynamically built characters on shows like JAG or China Beach looked good in a uniform. And proficiency with weapons is another plus. So for today, we'll leave the tuxedos to the spies and focus on warrior heroes (in and out of uniform). For the writers among us, we'll also touch on resources for creating and equipping these guys.

    Vikings seem to be enjoying a resurgence lately. My favorite Viking film, which I discovered because Gerri Russell assured me I'd love it, is The 13th Warrior, starring Antonio Banderas. It's the role in which I like him best because of the challenges his character faces and the ways he grows as a result. He isn't a Viking, but he's surrounded by them. They're the other twelve warriors. This film has noble purpose and lots of swordplay. Banderas' character isn't a warrior hero at the start of the film, but he is at the end.

    If you're writing a Viking hero, how do you know what he wears or carries? Or what his world is like? There are a lot of terrific books out there about Vikings and their culture. My favorite source for information about warriors of all eras is Osprey publishing. Click on the appropriate country, and prices will appear in your currency. The books are not cheap, but they're aimed at military history buffs, so they contain fabulous details that can be hard to find elsewhere. When I needed to know how much a medieval archer earned, I found the information in an Osprey book.

    Moving forward, there's the medieval period with its knights and dragons and derring-do. I'm seriously biased in this regard, but I don't think you can beat the Plantagenets for pure flash and dash in the whole spectrum of British history. Medievals also seem to be having a resurgence, especially ones featuring Knights Templar. Claudia Dain's The Marriage Bed and Christina Dodd's Candle in the Window (a medieval, not a Regency, despite what the cover implies) are wonderful medievals. So are all of Gerri Russell's Scottish medievals, which start with The Warrior Trainer.

    Equipping the medieval hero is easier than it is for warriors of other eras. There are many, many medieval histories available, and there are probably enough books in print about castles to built one out of them. Dorling-Kindersley's children's books about medieval life and about knights can be a great resource to get a feel for the era. Osprey, of course, has terrific resources for various medieval periods. Some of these books are available in libraries, though not all. It's always worth checking since books can become a huge expense.

    The American Revolution doesn't seem like a very popular period, but the Regency, with its popular veterans of the Napoleonic Wars makes, up for that. I've always wished there were more naval heroes in Regencies. It's hard to set a Regency on a ship, of course. You'd lose lots of the period's fun conventions. Major Lucas Winter, in Sabrina Jeffries' wonderful Never Seduce A Scoundrel (School for Heiresses series), is an American Marine, a veteran of the campaign against the Barbary Pirates, and a wonderful character and one of the few American military heroes I've seen from this period. While Victorians seem to have a strong market presence, I haven't seen any Crimean War heroes. Maybe someone can recommend one.

    I'm hoping World War I and World War II begin to gain market share because I love those stories. The Vietnam war doesn't seem to have produced many romance heroes, either. Maybe it's too recent to be historical and too remote to be contemporary. I do love all the current and former SEALs who keep turning up as heroes. My parents were in the Navy, so I'm naturally biased. I loved the TV show JAG, even though the primary weapons utilized were legal briefs. Veterans from all service branches seem to be appearing in a lot of romances, and I enjoy that.

    Cassondra tipped me off that YouTube can be a gret resource for video of weapons in use, so I've been consulting that site from time to time. Osprey has great contemporary source material, including several books on Special Forces, and there are many, many excellent memoirs out there. The U.S. Navy website has a special section on SEALs with video of their training and interviews with trainees. The conflicts in Iraq and Iran have produced excellent memoirs by soldiers, such as Lone Survivor by Marcus Luttrell with Patrick Robinson (SEALs), Chasing Ghosts by Paul Reickhoff (infantry in urban warfare), and The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell by John Crawford (National Guard in various settings).

    Who's your favorite military hero in books or on film? Why does this particular hero appeal to you? If you're a writer, what are your favorite sources?Source URL: https://idontwanttobeanythingotherthanme.blogspot.com/search/label/military%20heroes
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