About 10 years ago, I actually finished a novel manuscript of around 600 pages. Not bad for a then 28 year old man still struggling to work in the profession he chose.
What the hell made me do this? Like most things in my life, ignited by a fit of anger and boredom. I started writing this in 1995 when I was looking for work in one of the more difficult recessions in Canadian economic history. Took about 2 years to write and about a year to edit it into readable fashion and then a mere 3 months to get an agent.
"Enough about the fucking process, asshole! What's the goddamned story about?"
The story is about two nations, one on the upside and one on the downside and how things go very bad when they collide.
"Big fucking deal. Spare me the geopolitical shit."
Well, it's in a genre that is almost dead these days with comic book adapations and Harry Potter books, the technothriller as popularized by Tom Clancy, Stephen Coonts et al. I figured that I could be an awful writer as well as engineer.
Anyway, As you might have gathered from the label, The Eagle and The Dragon is about the US and China going at it over Taiwan and oil (big shock) found in the South China Sea. The idea of the book is not unique as USAF loving Dale Brown wrote a novel that covered that, but done without any context of history and put more emphasis on the victory by bombing from 25000 crowd (who I've always thought were about as realistic as the Grandmaison French generals of WW1 who believed in willpower over firepower.)
Unlike most technothrillers, I tried to focus in my own stilted way on the human element as much as the weapons.
No comments:
Post a Comment