Update 1/20/2012
The first two episodes are done and the third only needs one more chapter and some more proofreading. So it is time to start thinking about cover art and some intro blurbs.
I spent a long time wandering around www.DeviantArt.com looking for an artist whose style I liked. Eventually I stumbled across the Art Deco category and really liked it. The 1930s, the setting for this story, was at the height of the Art Deco period. Plus it seemed like a style where I could achieve something interesting with my meager art skills. The artwork in the following was created using Google’s Sketch-up software and the text was created using Microsoft Powerpoint.
Additionally, I wanted something that would emphasize the serial nature of the story and provide a little branding. Therefore I am currently leaning towards using the same artwork for all the episodes and just change the text.
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Author’s Note
This series is inspired in part by the old Republic movie serials ‘King of the Rocket Men’, ‘Radar Men from the Moon’, and ‘Zombies of the Stratosphere’ and uses some similar technological devices like rocket planes and jetpacks. I have moved the time frame from the early 1950’s to 1936 because I thought adding Nazis to the mix would be fun. (Hmm, should Nazis and fun really be used in the same sentence?)
In keeping with the movie serial concept, where each episode ran about ten minutes and ended with a cliffhanger, I have decided to do something similar here. Each episode of this story runs about 90-100 pages and ends in some kind of a cliffhanger. An hour and a half of reading seems like a reasonable return for a 99 cent investment.
As I was writing the second and third episodes, I began to realize I really like this format. It seems like lately I have been buying lots of books that run 300-400 pages, but a lot of that just feels like filler. Frequently, I ended getting bored and give up after only reading the first 100-200 pages. However with this format, I am forced to come up with something interesting every 90 pages to convince the reader to stick with the story for another episode – so the story by nature moves along at a brisk pace.
Before starting this series I spent about eight years writing fanfiction. Now, a lot of people frown on fanfiction, but I think it was a valuable learning experience for me. With fanfiction, you typically post stories one chapter at a time. If you are only going to get a new chapter every few weeks, in my view it meant every chapter had to contain something special or else it wasn’t worth posting. I have tried to maintain the same philosophy here. When I start writing each chapter, I try to figure out what is cool, fun, or special about it and would put a stupid grin on my face as I write. If I couldn’t figure that out, it usually meant the chapter really wasn’t necessary to the story. So hopefully, every chapter of every episode contains at least some little gem that makes it fun and worth reading.
Episode 1 – The year is 1936 and it has been ten years since the extremely high energy trans-atomic elements were discovered. The first practical applications like trans-atomic powered ships and trains are just beginning to roll out.
Margaret ‘Stoney’ Stonehaven, the head of Stonehaven Industries, a ship and aircraft manufacturer based in Long Beach, California, has just arrived in Britain for the annual running of the Stewart Cup Air Race with her new trans-atomic powered craft, Shooting Star. She is expecting an easy victory until the Nazis show up with a trans-atomic powered entry of their own.
However with race day still almost a week away, Stoney receives an urgent message from President Roosevelt. Mysterious flying men have attacked the American Embassy in La Paz, Bolivia and kidnapped the Ambassador. The President needs Stoney to investigate. Since her college days at Stanford after the Great War, Stoney has been an occasional special operative for the Hoover Institute’s clandestine arm, which does assignments for the President that can’t be publically acknowledged. So when the President tells her to jump, all she can ask is ‘How high?’
Therefore Stoney takes Shooting Star and a small team to Bolivia where they discover an unknown adversary with technology and weapons more powerful than they had ever imagined.
Episode 2 – Stoney and her team have been stranded in the hinterlands of Bolivia – time to break out the jetpacks!
With the aid of her unexpected Nazi allies, Stoney races back to Europe in search of clues to who their unknown adversaries are. Because with weapons like the old converted trans-atomic powered flying battleship, these foes can strike anywhere in the world with impunity.
But with an agenda of their own, the opposition is not sitting still and their path will once again collide with Stoney in the skies over Paris.
Episode 3 – Stoney has been captured by their adversaries and taken to their city-sized flying flagship. While she is discovering the identity of the person in charge, her compatriots are forced to battle on without her. And a battle it is, as their adversary attacks a major U.S. city. Now it is a race to round up sufficient resources between the Americans, British, and Nazis to defeat this seemingly unstoppable foe.
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Update 12/4/2011
To help me picture in my head the characters as I write (and, frankly, to dream a little about this story someday being turned into a big budget movie), I’ve picked out the following actors who I think could play the main characters:
Jessica Biel as Margaret ‘Stoney’ Stonehaven (38). Together with her younger brother, Tommy, Stoney runs Stonehaven Industries, a ship and aircraft manufacturer based out of Long Beach, California. A graduate of Stanford, she is an occasional agent of a clandestine branch of the Hoover Institute, which handles special secret projects for the President. In her spare time, she is a world class airplane racer.
Katee Sackhoff as Samantha ‘Sam’ Anderson (36). Sam is Stoney’s chief mechanic and best friend. The two women met in France during the closing months of the Great War on the day Sam lost her hearing while working as an ambulance driver at the Front.
Tim Olyphant as Truman Cartwright (34). Truman, a Major in the U.S. Army, is the military attache at the American Embassy in London. The second son of the richest landowner in Georgia, he stands to inherit nothing except a generous allowance. A gentleman officer, he joined the Army and attended West Point to travel and see the world.
Aaron Eckhart as Horst Eckmann (41). Horst, a Colonel in the German Luftwaffe, is a veteran of the Great War. With the virtual elimination of the German Air Force after the war as a result of the terms of the Versailles Treaty, Horst spent a dozen years flying for the Bolivian Air Force. In late 1934 he returned to the Luftwaffe as the chief pilot of their experimental trans-atomic flight test program.
Rhona Mitra as Ruth Nichols (37). Ruth, a charter member of ‘The ninety-nines’ the first 99 licensed female pilots in the U.S., is an old flying friend of Stoney’s. The two women spent a large portion of the 1920′s barnstorming before Stoney was forced to take over her father’s company on his death. Now, Ruth is the chief test pilot for Stonehaven Industries.
Nina Dobrev as Dorothy ‘Dot’ Lang (26). Dot is the brilliant young lead engineer on Stonehaven Industries’ Jetpack design team. A geeky engineer at heart, she doesn’t fully appreciate her true beauty and its effect on men.
Cate Blanchett as Empress Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova (34). Anastasia is the sole survivor of the July 1918 massacre of Tsar Nicholaus and his family. She is the leader of the White Russian forces opposing the Bolsheviks. She holds the secret to the origins of the trans-atomic elements.
Lyndsy Fonseca as Countess Larisa Andreevna Dubroskaya (21). Larisa, a Lieutenant in the White Russian military, is a Countess in name only until the Bolsheviks are forced out of power. She acts as an aide to Empress Anastasia aboard the Imperator Nicholas, the trans-atomic powered flying flagship of the White Russian military.
Josh Brolin as Count Kirill Poluektovich Naryshkin (38). Kirill is the Field Marshall of the White Russian Forces and the Empress’ right hand man, but he harbors a secret agenda, which may be the Empress’ undoing.
Keri Russell as Doctor Professor Irene Joliot-Curie (38). Irene, a Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry for her work in developing new trans-atomic elements, is the daughter of Marie Curie, two-time winner of the Nobel in Physics and Chemistry. Stoney met Irene on her first day in Paris during the Great War and they became life long friends. Now, Irene, the mother of two small children, is the head of the Curie Institute in Paris.
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Update 9/25/2011
As a little demo of the text-to-speech software I use for proofreading you can access an MP3 streaming audio version of the first chapter of the first episode here. Note: This chapter has a run time of 14 minutes.
If you would like to to contact me, my email is: duaneaa@gmail.com
