No, not in love with a man. (Or with a woman, for that matter.) But rather, with a book.
…
Oh, come on, now, don’t give me that look! Like it’s never happened to you.
Here, allow me to explain.
Pioneering OSS Agents (need I say more?)
While on vacation I was reading (studying, more like) this super interesting book called Operatives, Spies, and Saboteurs: The Unknown Story of World War II’s OSS by Patrick K. O’Donnell…and OMG, it has all sorts of information I haven’t been able to find about technology just before and during WWII. (It’s the little things in life that make me squeal with delight, simultaneously rousing my muse to an uber happy place.) This book talks about what kind of training their recruits had to go through, some key operations and also some of the gadgets spies used back then like knives disguised as pens, fairly elegant dart guns, and the “L” (lethal) pill, among other things. (Whispers: it even has pictures!)
Quite fascinating, really, and I’m simply in awe by the amount of research that went into putting this book together. Lots of riveting first-hand accounts. (I haven’t read a book this interesting in ages, so I guess this says something about the fiction I’ve read in that time, eh?)
…And the whole time I’m reading it I’m mentally generating scene ideas for my next novel while meditating on how to improve various details in my current WIP to make them more life-like.
Entertainment, education, inspiration… What more could you possibly ask for in a historical novel?
Why Else This Book Rox My Sox
It’s especially lovely because it almost reads like a genre historical war/espionage thriller yet at the same time is so informative. (The only big difference is that the author likes to tell you things before he reveals them via storytelling. “Operation X would be his demise. This is how it happened.” He does it more elegantly than this, of course, and in more detail, but that’s pretty much how it goes down.)
Also, when reading the first-hand accounts, you really do get a sense of the character of a lot of these guys and the human aspect of being involved in a pioneer organization. One of my favorite passages was regarding a mission to gather intelligence in Istanbul; surviving team member Spiro Cappony recalls:
I accepted the mission and was joined by two other team members, A. Georgiades and Mike Angelos, and they said, ‘Gus (they called me Gus), how the hell are we going to get to Istanbul?’ This is how new we were. ’Who’s going to meet us?’ ’A guy by the name of Spurning, he’s a professor from Yale University.’ One of them said, ‘How the hell are we going to know who the guy is?’ I said, ‘Well, my orders say he’s going to show a ruby ring on his finger.’ ’Man oh man these guys are crazy,’ remarked one of the guys. (107)
I mean this is enough cause and inspiration for me to make parodies of the classic spy story or something. I love it.
Here’s another brief passage that I just love about an operational group, comprising Greek-American and Greek national recruits, who were to be deployed in Greece:
At [Camp Patrick Henry in Virginia] our boys would march and sing, both in English and Greek, and the entire camp would say, ‘Who are these guys?’ We were dressed smartly, had new experimental clothing including jump boots, and we were the first unit to be assigned the new Eisenhower jacket. We looked good, acted good, and the biggest thing, we felt good. (110-111)
Yeah, classic cocky guy talk and behavior. I am just itching to write about more characters like this in my next novel who are new to some experimental endeavor. (Much like America’s pioneering airmail pilots, who have also been a big inspiration for me; I guess you could say I have a thing for pioneers, heh.)
As it turns out, though, my heroine is more of a “sky spy” than a conventional field agent (kind of playing off those conspiracy stories that claim Amelia Earhart was spying on the Japanese here), so I’ll probably get more mileage out of this historical account after I start writing the next novel…like sometime next year, heh. Still, it does help.
Learning Along With Your Characters
Sometimes I feel I’m at a big disadvantage in that I don’t have any experience in the types of things I want to write about, so reading books like this really helps to put things in perspective for me.
I remember when I first started doing drafts of my novel how I wanted to write about a heroine who was highly experienced in all of tasks she is hired to do throughout the story but then later decided to go the route of someone who was new to many aspects of her world. T. S. Bazelli once wrote an article about Lost World Fiction in her Speculative Fiction Genre Glossary Project, and while talking about the Lara Croft adventures I mentioned how originally I wanted to write about an actiony Croft-type character who was not only adventurous and very knowledgeable in her field but could also kick some serious butt. However, the more my story evolved and the more I learned about my leading character, the more I realized that this approach wasn’t right for her story because I was starting it at a point in her life where she didn’t (yet) have those kinds of qualities. Instead, she starts off more like Evelyn from The Mummy, with some background in art history and pretty much zero experience as a treasure-seeker or gunfighter–thank you very much, Mr. O’Connell-types.
And as a first-time novelist I think there’s some advantage to not writing about a woman who is super kick-ass heroine right off the bat, but rather an unassuming heroine–one who is clearly not everything her employers need her to be though chooses to undergo transformation in order to become that person. (This is a perfect place to start with a protagonist if you’re writing epic fantasy, I think, and I suspect my story could actually be classified as epic, though it is not traditionally so.) For one, as she learns more about her world and is trained to acquire new skill sets, the reader also learns about the world and how things are supposed to work. Also, as the author, such an approach allows you to learn things as you go along–especially during the editing stage when you’re trying to color in those little particulars you just kind of sketched in before.
…Which is kind of nice when you know just a little as your protagonist going in!
So Yeah, This Has All Been Extremely Fascinating…
But I really should get back to work now! (Returning from vacation doesn’t make this easy, heh.)
Though, I do still need a prompt…
What are/were some major sources of inspiration for your current or most recent WIP?
Also, how has learning more about that source shaped the direction you chose to take your story in?
