History is history.

I don’t know if there are many others who feel the same way as I do. But I am now kicking myself over and over again that I never took the ancient civilization classes offered to me in high school. But then again, I doubt I knew my life was heading into the direction of writing. That was before I realized I was capable of writing something original!

Anyway, that’s my grip for the moment.

I’ve been trying my hardest to gather accurate information. On a recent twitter I posted that I had been inspired to write. The son of King Leonidas (yes, the one that screamed THIS IS SPARTA! King Leonidas) the history books do not have any information as to what became of his son Pleistarchus. The name is a mouthful that I know. But after looking and researching I have gathered mixed results. There are two explanations at to what became of him. One, he died in a battle in Athens at the age of 22. Or, he was told that he had angered the gods, the elders told him to flee in order to prevent all of Sparta from sharing his faith. But nothing explained how he died, no accurate details or what be did when he did become King of Sparta.

Interesting no? We all know what happened to his father, 300 Spartan men and 7,000 Athenians, but nothing on what became of his son.

I try to be as accurate a possible when I take a historical figure and use them in my series. It’s never easy, which brings be me back to my grip from earlier.

Damn!

I hoped those who read my last blog liked my sample of my novel. It is a little deceiving. I have had people from authonomy post how good the beginning was and how they love Lucas and where he would go in the story.

Confession and Spoiler alert.

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Lucas isn’t the main character.

Deceiving isn’t it?

Well this is all I have to say for now, I hope to have more interesting things to write about later on. August is going to be a very busy month for me. Rock Concert, birthday, comic con (yes, I am a nerd!) But we will have to wait and see what happens.

Until next time…

Well… you know! ;)

just blogging for the sake of blogging

A blog about nothing special

I know it has been a few days since I posted anything, but I find sometimes I don’t really have anything worthy to post about! I am still waiting to hear from the publisher (no surprise really) but that hasn’t been the only thing on my mind.

As of late, despite the ideas I have brewing in my head, I can’t seem to put them to paper. In fact, I had created a whole different story series just recently, yet I am trying to find the right voices and proper historical content to use. But I am still passionately working on my original vampire series that has at least twelve book ideas.

I find they aren’t too bloody later on down the line. It gets rather tame. However, one shouldn’t keep bombarding their reader with the same gore right? There are new characters, new histories to learn and perspectives to see. Sometimes the scariest element of the story is not the immortals, but the people they come across and what they see in their time. That has been my muse as of late, history. And I have an utter fascination with World War 2.

I explained in a pervious blog that people have stated no one really cares about the war nor are the students these days really let the concept sink in. This isn’t targeted at all students, for some it may strike a cord, others, it rolls off their backs as they wait to see how much longer they have to be in school until they go off to University.

But I believed that Quentin Tarantino had the right idea when he made Inglorious Bastards. It was something new and different for people to view what happened during the war. Although the storyline wasn’t true, it perhaps peeked people’s curiosity as to what really happened in Europe.

It’s what I have been doing when I write. Despite the perspective and the alteration of the history, most of it is true. Yet I always seem to make my vampires say the same line over and over to one another, and especially the new characters that come into view.

“Mortals made this war, they are the ones to end it, not us”

I try to alter a few situations to make it easier for the reader to take in, but at the same time I need to make it raw and have them know what happened to those people back in the 1930s and 1940s was very real. But the part of me prefers my world of fiction, my vampire’s interpretation since they saved lives, as many as they could. But in truth, what I have learned from books and war documentaries is anything but the truth. You didn’t have vampires who would fight against the Nazis with as many numbers as they could gather, you had brave men and women who died fighting, and those who watched their friends and even their own brothers and sister parish at their side is all the more heart wrenching.

Difficult to write, impossible to put into words.

I will never do that time frame justice, no matter how many books I read or war specials I watch. It can never be done, it will only be written with great justice by those who were there and witnessed it first hand. Those who fought for survival no only on the battle fields, but also the horrible concentration camps. The free thinkers who lived in Germany and knew what happened in the world around them was wrong, and fought with everything they had to help those in need.

A picture can be worth a thousand words, but finding those words to use… well… I don’t know if it could be possible.

I do apologize for going back to this theme for a blog, I have been absorbed in the time frame for a while. In fact, one of my vampires gains his name… after he runs into my Grandfather stationed in Europe….

Stay thirsty.

Monsters...

I don’t know why it took me so long to figure this out.

Why write a horror story with fictitious creatures, when there have been true monsters in our history books? In high school, I was fascinated with history, mainly the World Wars struck a cord since I had been made aware of family members who fought and died in it.

In fact, my grandfather fought in World War 2. He nearly lost his legs while running a leaking propane tank out of a medical tent, I never knew much more after that, how many lives he may have saved, but all I knew was that he nearly lost his legs, and was one of the many people who tested a new medical procedure that is used for burn victims today. Skin graphs.

He was part of medical history and war history, but now I am getting off topic.

Monsters, that was the original idea I was trying to talk about.

In our history books more than in our minds, it saddened me greatly to learn that there are students who don’t fully understand the idea of what had happened over 60 years ago, since it didn’t concern them. Some just don’t plain care. It’s not ‘interesting’ enough for them. I have been watching war specials in the month of April and May. Just learning about the brave men and women who had gone over seas only to never return. As I look at it now, those who died were teenage boys and men who were my age. In the prime of their lives, taken down by fighting for a cause.

It’s one of the many reasons that got me to write my books, I wanted them to be as historically accurate as possible so for those who don’t really get into history.

You don't need Jason or a Freddy Kruger to make your skin crawl, just look back 50 years and read what happened in Europe. Go back farther to read about Hannibal and even Cleopatra! Heck, watch a show called ancients behaving badly, and you'll see what I mean about the 'Queen of the Nile' (she murdered her own family, just to gain power. Her two brothers and sister were killed since she saw them as competition!)

Who needs vampires and other fictitious creatures when you could read about real life monsters?

Or perhaps, that's just it...

We all know the truth about vampires and other creatures of the night, perhaps that is why we attach ourselves to the monsters of fiction

It's because we know they didn't exist...

Stay thirsty.